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Lakes Studies from Satellite Altimetry

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Coastal Altimetry

Abstract

Accurate and continuous monitoring of lakes and inland seas has been possible since 1993 thanks to the success of satellite altimetry missions: TOPEX/POSEIDON (T/P), GFO, JASON-1, and ENVISAT. Global processing of the data of these satellites can provide time series of lake surface heights over the entire Earth at different temporal and spatial scales with a subdecimeter precision. Large lakes affect climate on a regional scale through albedo and evaporation. In some regions, highly ephemeral lakes provide information on extreme events such as severe droughts or floods. On the other hand, endorheic basin lakes are sensitive to changes in regional water balance. In a given region covered by a group of lakes, if the records of their level variations are long enough, they could reveal the recurrence of trends in a very reliable and accurate manner. Lakes are thought to have enough inertia to be considered as an excellent proxy for climate change. Moreover, during the last century, thousands of dams have been constructed along the big rivers worldwide, leading to the appearance of large reservoirs. This has several impacts on the basins affected by those constructions, as well as effects on global sea level rise. The response of water levels to regional hydrology is particularly marked for lakes and inland seas of semiarid regions. Altimetry data can provide a valuable source of information in hydrology sciences, but in-situ data (river runoff, water level, temperature, or precipitation) are still strongly needed to study the evolution of the water mass balance of each lake.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A2 and B2 are two different scenarios, though not extremes, of what Earth might be like by the endof the twenty-first century. B2 scenario emphasizes environmental preservation and social equity while A2 scenario anticipates higher CO2 concentrations, larger human population, greater energy consumption, more changes in land use and scarcer resources, and less diverse applications of technology

  2. 2.

    The location of the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) varies over time. Over land, it movesback and forth across the equator following the sun’s zenith point. Over the oceans, where the convergence zone is better defined, the seasonal cycle is more subtle, as the convection is constrained by the distribution of ocean temperatures

  3. 3.

    I.V. Rubanov is a Russian scientist who did core drilling of the Aral Sea bottom in the 1980s in order to study the past regressions and transgressions of the Aral Sea. He provided a map of salt deposits in his different core, some of them including Mirabilite.

Abbreviations

AO:

Antarctic Oscillation

AVISO:

Archiving, Validation and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic data

CNES:

Centre National d’Études Spatiales

CTOH:

Centre de Topographie des Océans et de l’Hydrosphère

ECMWF:

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts

ENSO:

El Niño/Southern Oscillation

ESA:

European Space Agency

GCM:

Global Climate Model

GDR:

Geophysical Data Record

GFO:

Geosat Follow-On

IOD:

Indian Ocean dipole

IPCC:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

ITCZ:

InTertropical Convergence Zone

NAO:

Northern Atlantic Oscillation

NASA:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NATO:

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCEP:

National Center for Environmental Prediction

PDO:

Pacific Decadal Oscillation

PODAAC:

Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center

RMS:

Root Mean Square

SO:

Southern Oscillation

SST:

Sea Surface Temperature

T/P:

TOPEX/Poseidon

UNESCO:

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

USDA:

US Department of Agriculture

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Acknowledgments

Authors acknowledge the CTOH in Legos for providing altimetry data in a standard and useful form. Authors thank the ECOS-SUR program, which allocated funds for cooperation between France and Chile for the study of Andean lakes. Authors thank INTAS and NATO science program for supporting research on lakes in Central Asia, which has been used as case studies presented in this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNES/LEGOS, 14 av. Edouard Belin, F-31400, Toulouse, France

    J.-F. Crétaux, M. Bergé-Nguyen & P. Maisongrande

  2. LEGOS, IRD, CP 7091, Lago Sul, 71619 – 970, Brasilia (DF), Brasil

    S. Calmant

  3. Departamento de Geofísica (DGEO), Facultad de Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile

    R. Abarca del Rio

  4. UPS (OMP-PCA), LEGOS, Université de Toulouse, 14 av. Edouard Belin, F-31400, Toulouse, France

    A. Kouraev

  5. St. Petersburg branch, State Oceanography Institute, Vasilyevskiy ostrov, 23 liniya, 2a, St. Petersburg, Russia

    A. Kouraev

Authors
  1. J.-F. Crétaux
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  2. S. Calmant
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  3. R. Abarca del Rio
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  4. A. Kouraev
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  5. M. Bergé-Nguyen
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  6. P. Maisongrande
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to J.-F. Crétaux .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ist. Biofisica, CNR Pisa, Via G. Moruzzi 1, Pisa, 56124, Italy

    Stefano Vignudelli

  2. , P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Nakhimovsky Pr. 36, Moscow, 117997, Russian Federation

    Andrey G. Kostianoy

  3. Lab. Satellite Oceanography, Ocean Observing & Climate Res. Group, National Oceanography Centre, European Way, Southampton, SO14 3ZH, United Kingdom

    Paolo Cipollini

  4. Directorate of Earth Observation Program, European Space Agency /ESRIN, Via Galileo Galilei, Frascati (Roma), 00044, Italy

    Jérôme Benveniste

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Crétaux, JF., Calmant, S., del Rio, R.A., Kouraev, A., Bergé-Nguyen, M., Maisongrande, P. (2011). Lakes Studies from Satellite Altimetry. In: Vignudelli, S., Kostianoy, A., Cipollini, P., Benveniste, J. (eds) Coastal Altimetry. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12796-0_19

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