Water Resources Research, volume 61, issue 1

Catchments Amplify Reservoir Thermal Response to Climate Warming

Bo Gai 1, 2, 3
Rohini Kumar 4
Frank Hüesker 5
Chenxi Mi 6
Xiangzhen Kong 1, 7
Bertram Boehrer 1
Karsten Rinke 1
Publication typeJournal Article
Publication date2025-01-07
scimago Q1
wos Q1
SJR1.574
CiteScore8.8
Impact factor4.6
ISSN00431397, 19447973
Abstract

Lentic waters integrate atmosphere and catchment processes, and thus ultimately capture climate signals. However, studies of climate warming effects on lentic waters usually do not sufficiently account for a change in heat flux from the catchment through altered inflow temperature and discharge under climate change. This is particularly relevant for reservoirs, which are highly impacted by catchment hydrology and may be affected by upstream reservoirs or pre‐dams. This study explicitly quantified how the catchment and pre‐dams modify the thermal response of Rappbode Reservoir, Germany's largest drinking water reservoir system, to climate change. We established a catchment‐lake modeling chain in the main reservoir and its two pre‐dams utilizing the lake model GOTM, the catchment model mHM, and the stream temperature model Air2stream, forced by an ensemble of climate projections under RCP2.6 and 8.5 warming scenarios. Results exhibited a warming of 0.27/0.15°C decade−1 for the surface/bottom temperatures of the main reservoir, with approximately 8%/24% of this warming attributed to the catchment warming, respectively. The catchment warming amplified the deep water warming more than at the surface, contrary to the atmospheric warming effect, and advanced stratification by about 1 week, while having a minor impact on stratification intensity. On the other hand, pre‐dams reduced the inflow temperature into the main reservoir in spring, and consequently lowered the hypolimnetic temperature and postponed stratification onset. This shielded the main reservoir from climate warming, although overall the contribution of pre‐dams was minimal. Altogether, our study highlights the importance of catchment alterations and seasonality when projecting reservoir warming, and provides insights into catchment‐reservoir coupling under climate change.

Steingruber S.M.
2024-06-01 citations by CoLab: 1 Abstract  
The impact of atmospheric deposition and environmental factors on catchment processes and water chemistry of 20 high-altitude Alpine lakes in Southern Switzerland was investigated over four decades. Through the analysis of input-output budgets of sulphur (S), nitrogen (N), base cations and alkalinity significant trends emerged. Notably, S and N input concentrations significantly declined since the 1980s, by approximately 78 % and 22 %, respectively, with N primarily declining after 2000. Recovery from acidification was slightly delayed, likely due to the increased release of S, possibly originating from legacy S pools, alongside the simultaneous reduction in leaching of base cations from exchange sites. Catchments heavily impacted by thawing cryospheric features increasingly released S and base cations due to enhanced weathering processes, with hardly any impact on the recovery process, as evidenced by the balanced releases of S and base cations. N output concentrations followed the decrease of N input concentrations, while the relative N retention in the catchments remained relatively stable. Recently, both input concentrations of S and N have stabilised, while output concentrations of base cations began to increase across all catchments. The trend likely arises from the stabilisation of S and N input concentrations and/or the ongoing increase in weathering rates induced by climate change. Consequently, there was a consistent rise in alkalinity output concentrations even after the stabilisation of the S and N input concentrations. Ion ratio analysis suggests that carbonation primarily drives weathering processes in catchment areas unaffected by thawing cryosphere, while in areas impacted by thawing cryosphere, sulphide oxidation (or sulphate dissolution) is the dominant process. Further recovery depends on future N deposition and the effects of climate change.
Olsson F., Mackay E.B., Spears B.M., Barker P., Jones I.D.
Ambio scimago Q1 wos Q1
2024-05-25 citations by CoLab: 3 Abstract  
AbstractGlobally, climate warming is increasing air temperatures and changing river flows, but few studies have explicitly considered the consequences for lake temperatures of these dual effects, or the potential to manage lake inflows to mitigate climate warming impacts. Using a one-dimensional model, we tested the sensitivity of lake temperatures to the separate and interacting effects of changes in air temperature and inflow on a small, short-residence time (annual average ≈ 20 days), temperate lake. Reducing inflow by 70% increased summer lake surface temperatures 1.0–1.2 °C and water column stability by 11–19%, equivalent to the effect of 1.2 °C air temperature warming. Conversely, similar increases in inflow could result in lake summer cooling, sufficient to mitigate 0.75 °C air temperature rise, increasing to more than 1.1 °C if inflow temperature does not rise. We discuss how altering lake inflow volume and temperature could be added to the suite of adaptation measures for lakes.
Shu L., Li X., Chang Y., Meng X., Chen H., Qi Y., Wang H., Li Z., Lyu S.
2024-04-03 citations by CoLab: 5 Abstract  
Abstract. Understanding the intricate hydrological interactions between lakes and their surrounding watersheds is pivotal for advancing hydrological research, optimizing water resource management, and informing climate change mitigation strategies. Yet, these complex dynamics are often insufficiently captured in existing hydrological models, such as the bi-direction surface and subsurface flow. To bridge this gap, we introduce a novel lake–watershed coupled model, an enhancement of the Simulator of Hydrological Unstructured Domains. This high-resolution, distributed model employs unstructured triangles as its fundamental hydrological computing units (HCUs), offering a physical approach to hydrological modeling. We validated our model using data from Qinghai Lake in China, spanning from 1979 to 2018. Remarkably, the model not only successfully simulated the streamflow of the Buha River, a key river within the Qinghai Lake basin, achieving a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.62 and 0.76 for daily and monthly streamflow, respectively, but also accurately reproduced the decrease–increase U-shaped curve of lake level change over the past 40 years, with an NSE of 0.71. Our model uniquely distinguishes the contributions of various components to the lake's long-term water balance, including river runoff, surface direct runoff, lateral groundwater contribution, direct evaporation, and precipitation. This work underscores the potential of our coupled model as a powerful tool for understanding and predicting hydrological processes in lake basins, thereby contributing to more effective water resource management and climate change mitigation strategies.
MacIntyre S., Hamilton D.P.
2024-01-01 citations by CoLab: 3 Abstract  
The heating of ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, and wetlands determines their temperatures and the movement of heat creates the density structure in the water column in which organisms live and interact and in which chemical reactions occur. Temperature and thermal structure in individual lakes and flowing waters are dynamic and change daily, seasonally, and over longer time scales depending on rates of heating and cooling and the extent of mixing in the water column. This chapter provides the background to understand the contribution of meteorology and other factors, such as incoming streams, to heating and cooling. It describes the variables used in surface energy budgets, which, along with advection, are the largest determinants of heating and cooling, and illustrates how changes in these terms modify the thermal structure and mixing over diel and seasonal cycles for lakes at different latitudes. It presents the various ways in which heat budgets can be used to quantify stability and the extent of mixing, approaches for calculations, and interpretation of the resulting variables. Using examples from high-resolution instrumentation, it illustrates the dynamic nature of stratification, particularly in the uppermost layers of lakes, which has led to an improved understanding of the extent to which heat, solutes, and particulates such as phytoplankton will be redistributed over diel cycles. Illustrations include annual patterns of stratification as they depend on latitude, elevation, and lake morphometry. The chapter concludes with examples of changes in temperature and mixing dynamics during the recent period of climate change.
Lewis A.S., Lau M.P., Jane S.F., Rose K.C., Be'eri‐Shlevin Y., Burnet S.H., Clayer F., Feuchtmayr H., Grossart H., Howard D.W., Mariash H., Delgado Martin J., North R.L., Oleksy I., Pilla R.M., et. al.
Global Change Biology scimago Q1 wos Q1
2023-12-06 citations by CoLab: 8 Abstract  
AbstractDeclining oxygen concentrations in the deep waters of lakes worldwide pose a pressing environmental and societal challenge. Existing theory suggests that low deep‐water dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations could trigger a positive feedback through which anoxia (i.e., very low DO) during a given summer begets increasingly severe occurrences of anoxia in following summers. Specifically, anoxic conditions can promote nutrient release from sediments, thereby stimulating phytoplankton growth, and subsequent phytoplankton decomposition can fuel heterotrophic respiration, resulting in increased spatial extent and duration of anoxia. However, while the individual relationships in this feedback are well established, to our knowledge, there has not been a systematic analysis within or across lakes that simultaneously demonstrates all of the mechanisms necessary to produce a positive feedback that reinforces anoxia. Here, we compiled data from 656 widespread temperate lakes and reservoirs to analyze the proposed anoxia begets anoxia feedback. Lakes in the dataset span a broad range of surface area (1–126,909 ha), maximum depth (6–370 m), and morphometry, with a median time‐series duration of 30 years at each lake. Using linear mixed models, we found support for each of the positive feedback relationships between anoxia, phosphorus concentrations, chlorophyll a concentrations, and oxygen demand across the 656‐lake dataset. Likewise, we found further support for these relationships by analyzing time‐series data from individual lakes. Our results indicate that the strength of these feedback relationships may vary with lake‐specific characteristics: For example, we found that surface phosphorus concentrations were more positively associated with chlorophyll a in high‐phosphorus lakes, and oxygen demand had a stronger influence on the extent of anoxia in deep lakes. Taken together, these results support the existence of a positive feedback that could magnify the effects of climate change and other anthropogenic pressures driving the development of anoxia in lakes around the world.
Mi C., Shatwell T., Kong X., Rinke K.
Ambio scimago Q1 wos Q1
2023-11-08 citations by CoLab: 4 Abstract  
AbstractWe coupled twenty-first century climate projections with a well-established water quality model to depict future ecological changes of Rappbode Reservoir, Germany. Our results document a chain of climate-driven effects propagating through the aquatic ecosystem and interfering with drinking water supply: intense climate warming (RCP8.5 scenario) will firstly trigger a strong increase in water temperatures, in turn leading to metalimnetic hypoxia, accelerating sediment nutrient release and finally boosting blooms of the cyanobacterium Planktothrix rubescens. Such adverse water quality developments will be suppressed under RCP2.6 and 6.0 indicating that mitigation of climate change is improving water security. Our results also suggested surface withdrawal can be an effective adaptation strategy to make the reservoir ecosystem more resilient to climate warming. The identified consequences from climate warming and adaptation strategies are relevant to many deep waters in the temperate zone, and the conclusion should provide important guidances for stakeholders to confront potential climate changes.
Jiménez-Navarro I.C., Mesman J.P., Pierson D., Trolle D., Nielsen A., Senent-Aparicio J.
2023-08-01 citations by CoLab: 11 Abstract  
Climate change is simultaneously affecting lakes and their catchments, resulting in altered runoff patterns in the catchment and modified mixing and biogeochemical dynamics in lakes. The effects of climate change in a catchment will eventually have an impact on the dynamics of a downstream water body as well. An integrated model would allow considering how changes in the watershed affect the lake, but coupled modelling studies are rare. In this study we integrate a catchment model (SWAT+) and a lake model (GOTM-WET) to obtain holistic predictions for Lake Erken, Sweden. Using five different global climate models, projections of climate, catchment loads and lake water quality for the mid and end of the 21st century have been obtained under two future scenarios (SSP 2-45 and SSP 5-85). Temperature, precipitation and evapotranspiration will increase in the future, overall resulting in an increase in water inflow to the lake. An increasing importance of surface runoff will also have consequences on the catchment soil, hydrologic flow paths, and the input of nutrients to the lake. In the lake, water temperatures will rise, leading to increased stratification and a drop in oxygen levels. Nitrate levels are predicted to remain unchanged, while phosphate and ammonium levels increase. A coupled catchment-lake configuration such as that illustrated here allows prediction of future biogeochemical conditions of a lake, including linking land use changes to changing lake conditions, as well as eutrophication and browning studies. Since climate affects both the lake and the catchment, simulations of climate change should ideally take into account both systems.
Clayer F., Jackson-Blake L., Mercado-Bettín D., Shikhani M., French A., Moore T., Sample J., Norling M., Frias M., Herrera S., de Eyto E., Jennings E., Rinke K., van der Linden L., Marcé R.
2023-03-29 citations by CoLab: 7 Abstract  
Abstract. Despite high potential benefits, the development of seasonal forecasting tools in the water sector has been slower than in other sectors. Here we assess the skill of seasonal forecasting tools for lakes and reservoirs set up at four sites in Australia and Europe. These tools consist of coupled hydrological catchment and lake models forced with seasonal meteorological forecast ensembles to provide probabilistic predictions of seasonal anomalies in water discharge, temperature and ice-off. Successful implementation requires a rigorous assessment of the tools' predictive skill and an apportionment of the predictability between legacy effects and input forcing data. To this end, models were forced with two meteorological datasets from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the seasonal forecasting system, SEAS5, with 3-month lead times and the ERA5 reanalysis. Historical skill was assessed by comparing both model outputs, i.e. seasonal lake hindcasts (forced with SEAS5), and pseudo-observations (forced with ERA5). The skill of the seasonal lake hindcasts was generally low although higher than the reference hindcasts, i.e. pseudo-observations, at some sites for certain combinations of season and variable. The SEAS5 meteorological predictions showed less skill than the lake hindcasts. In fact, skilful lake hindcasts identified for selected seasons and variables were not always synchronous with skilful SEAS5 meteorological hindcasts, raising questions on the source of the predictability. A set of sensitivity analyses showed that most of the forecasting skill originates from legacy effects, although during winter and spring in Norway some skill was coming from SEAS5 over the 3-month target season. When SEAS5 hindcasts were skilful, additional predictive skill originates from the interaction between legacy and SEAS5 skill. We conclude that lake forecasts forced with an ensemble of boundary conditions resampled from historical meteorology are currently likely to yield higher-quality forecasts in most cases.
La Fuente S., Jennings E., Gal G., Kirillin G., Shatwell T., Ladwig R., Moore T., Couture R., Côté M., Love Råman Vinnå C., Iestyn Woolway R.
Journal of Hydrology scimago Q1 wos Q1
2022-12-01 citations by CoLab: 13 Abstract  
• Lake evaporation projections using a multi-model approach. • The model ensemble generally captured intra-annual variability and seasonality. • Projected increase in evaporation and decrease in precipitation this century. Lake evaporation plays an important role in the water budget of lakes. Predicting lake evaporation responses to climate change is thus of paramount importance for the planning of mitigation and adaption strategies. However, most studies that have simulated climate change impacts on lake evaporation have typically utilised a single mechanistic model. Whilst such studies have merit, projected changes in lake evaporation from any single lake model can be considered uncertain. To better understand evaporation responses to climate change, a multi-model approach (i.e., where a range of projections are considered), is desirable. In this study, we present such multi-model analysis, where five lake models forced by four different climate model projections are used to simulate historic and future change (1901-2099) in lake evaporation. Our investigation, which focuses on sub-tropical Lake Kinneret (Israel), suggested considerable differences in simulated evaporation rates among the models, with the annual average evaporation rates varying between 1232 mm year -1 and 2608 mm year -1 during the historic period (1901-2005). We explored these differences by comparing the models with reference evaporation rates estimated using in-situ data (2000-2005) and a bulk aerodynamic algorithm. We found that the model ensemble generally captured the intra-annual variability in reference evaporation rates, and compared well at seasonal timescales (RMSEc = 0.19, R=0.92). Using the model ensemble, we then projected future change in evaporation rates under three different Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios: RCP 2.6, 6.0 and 8.5. Our projections indicated that, by the end of the 21st century (2070-2099), annual average evaporation rates would increase in Lake Kinneret by 9-22% under RCPs 2.6-8.5. When compared with projected regional declines in precipitation, our projections suggested that the water balance of Lake Kinneret could experience a deficit of 14-40% this century. We anticipate this substantial projected deficit combined with a considerable growth in population expected for this region could have considerable negative impacts on water availability and would consequently increase regional water stress.
Feldbauer J., Ladwig R., Mesman J.P., Moore T.N., Zündorf H., Berendonk T.U., Petzoldt T.
Aquatic Sciences scimago Q1 wos Q2
2022-08-24 citations by CoLab: 12 Abstract  
Water temperature, ice cover, and lake stratification are important physical properties of lakes and reservoirs that control mixing as well as bio-geo-chemical processes and thus influence the water quality. We used an ensemble of vertical one-dimensional hydrodynamic lake models driven with regional climate projections to calculate water temperature, stratification, and ice cover under the A1B emission scenario for the German drinking water reservoir Lichtenberg. We used an analysis of variance method to estimate the contributions of the considered sources of uncertainty on the ensemble output. For all simulated variables, epistemic uncertainty, which is related to the model structure, is the dominant source throughout the simulation period. Nonetheless, the calculated trends are coherent among the five models and in line with historical observations. The ensemble predicts an increase in surface water temperature of 0.34 K per decade, a lengthening of the summer stratification of 3.2 days per decade, as well as decreased probabilities of the occurrence of ice cover and winter inverse stratification by 2100. These expected changes are likely to influence the water quality of the reservoir. Similar trends are to be expected in other reservoirs and lakes in comparable regions.
Kong X., Ghaffar S., Determann M., Friese K., Jomaa S., Mi C., Shatwell T., Rinke K., Rode M.
Water Research scimago Q1 wos Q1
2022-08-01 citations by CoLab: 41 Abstract  
• Impacts of drought-induced deforestation on reservoir water quality are evaluated. • Process-based catchment-reservoir coupled model is developed for future projections. • Deforestation of 80% loss by 2035 can lead to reservoir eutrophication. • Direct impacts of climate warming on the waterbody are marginal in such time scale. • Indirect impacts of climate change (via land use change) should be emphasized. Deforestation is currently a widespread phenomenon and a growing environmental concern in the era of rapid climate change. In temperate regions, it is challenging to quantify the impacts of deforestation on the catchment dynamics and downstream aquatic ecosystems such as reservoirs and disentangle these from direct climate change impacts, let alone project future changes to inform management. Here, we tackled this issue by investigating a unique catchment-reservoir system with two reservoirs in distinct trophic states (meso‑ and eutrophic), both of which drain into the largest drinking water reservoir in Germany. Due to the prolonged droughts in 2015–2018, the catchment of the mesotrophic reservoir lost an unprecedented area of forest (exponential increase since 2015 and ca. 17.1% loss in 2020 alone). We coupled catchment nutrient exports (HYPE) and reservoir ecosystem dynamics (GOTM-WET) models using a process-based modeling approach. The coupled model was validated with datasets spanning periods of rapid deforestation, which makes our future projections highly robust. Results show that in a short-term time scale (by 2035), increasing nutrient flux from the catchment due to vast deforestation (80% loss) can turn the mesotrophic reservoir into a eutrophic state as its counterpart. Our results emphasize the more prominent impacts of deforestation than the direct impact of climate warming in impairment of water quality and ecological services to downstream aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, we propose to evaluate the impact of climate change on temperate reservoirs by incorporating a time scale-dependent context, highlighting the indirect impact of deforestation in the short-term scale. In the long-term scale (e.g. to 2100), a guiding hypothesis for future research may be that indirect effects (e.g., as mediated by catchment dynamics) are as important as the direct effects of climate warming on aquatic ecosystems.
Woolway R.I., Sharma S., Smol J.P.
BioScience scimago Q1 wos Q1
2022-07-18 citations by CoLab: 115 Abstract  
Abstract Our planet is being subjected to unprecedented climate change, with far-reaching social and ecological repercussions. Below the waterline, aquatic ecosystems are being affected by multiple climate-related and anthropogenic stressors, the combined effects of which are poorly understood and rarely appreciated at the global stage. A striking consequence of climate change on aquatic ecosystems is that many are experiencing shorter periods of ice cover, as well as earlier and longer summer stratified seasons, which often result in a cascade of ecological and environmental consequences, such as warmer summer water temperatures, alterations in lake mixing and water levels, declines in dissolved oxygen, increased likelihood of cyanobacterial algal blooms, and the loss of habitat for native cold-water fisheries. The repercussions of a changing climate include impacts on freshwater supplies, water quality, biodiversity, and the ecosystem benefits that they provide to society.
Jansen J., Woolway R.I., Kraemer B.M., Albergel C., Bastviken D., Weyhenmeyer G.A., Marcé R., Sharma S., Sobek S., Tranvik L.J., Perroud M., Golub M., Moore T.N., Råman Vinnå L., La Fuente S., et. al.
Global Change Biology scimago Q1 wos Q1
2022-06-24 citations by CoLab: 43 Abstract  
Lakes are significant emitters of methane to the atmosphere, and thus are important components of the global methane budget. Methane is typically produced in lake sediments, with the rate of methane production being strongly temperature dependent. Local and regional studies highlight the risk of increasing methane production under future climate change, but a global estimate is not currently available. Here, we project changes in global lake bottom temperatures and sediment methane production rates from 1901 to 2099. By the end of the 21st century, lake bottom temperatures are projected to increase globally, by an average of 0.86-2.60°C under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6-8.5, with greater warming projected at lower latitudes. This future warming of bottom waters will likely result in an increase in methane production rates of 13%-40% by the end of the century, with many low-latitude lakes experiencing an increase of up to 17 times the historical (1970-1999) global average under RCP 8.5. The projected increase in methane production will likely lead to higher emissions from lakes, although the exact magnitude of the emission increase requires more detailed regional studies.
Golub M., Thiery W., Marcé R., Pierson D., Vanderkelen I., Mercado-Bettin D., Woolway R.I., Grant L., Jennings E., Kraemer B.M., Schewe J., Zhao F., Frieler K., Mengel M., Bogomolov V.Y., et. al.
Geoscientific Model Development scimago Q1 wos Q1 Open Access
2022-06-16 citations by CoLab: 62 Abstract  
Abstract. Empirical evidence demonstrates that lakes and reservoirs are warming across the globe. Consequently, there is an increased need to project future changes in lake thermal structure and resulting changes in lake biogeochemistry in order to plan for the likely impacts. Previous studies of the impacts of climate change on lakes have often relied on a single model forced with limited scenario-driven projections of future climate for a relatively small number of lakes. As a result, our understanding of the effects of climate change on lakes is fragmentary, based on scattered studies using different data sources and modelling protocols, and mainly focused on individual lakes or lake regions. This has precluded identification of the main impacts of climate change on lakes at global and regional scales and has likely contributed to the lack of lake water quality considerations in policy-relevant documents, such as the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here, we describe a simulation protocol developed by the Lake Sector of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) for simulating climate change impacts on lakes using an ensemble of lake models and climate change scenarios for ISIMIP phases 2 and 3. The protocol prescribes lake simulations driven by climate forcing from gridded observations and different Earth system models under various representative greenhouse gas concentration pathways (RCPs), all consistently bias-corrected on a 0.5∘ × 0.5∘ global grid. In ISIMIP phase 2, 11 lake models were forced with these data to project the thermal structure of 62 well-studied lakes where data were available for calibration under historical conditions, and using uncalibrated models for 17 500 lakes defined for all global grid cells containing lakes. In ISIMIP phase 3, this approach was expanded to consider more lakes, more models, and more processes. The ISIMIP Lake Sector is the largest international effort to project future water temperature, thermal structure, and ice phenology of lakes at local and global scales and paves the way for future simulations of the impacts of climate change on water quality and biogeochemistry in lakes.
Vieira Soares L.M., Calijuri M.D.
2022-03-01 citations by CoLab: 11 Abstract  
A coupled hydrodynamic-biogeochemical model was applied to simulate scenarios of classic restoration practices to address eutrophication in a cascade system comprised of six reservoirs along the Tietê River (Brazil) from 2008 to 2016. Each restoration scenario was propagated along the cascade system by using a sequential modelling approach. The simulated scenarios revealed which on-land and in-lake restoration techniques are capable of promoting water quality improvements that are propagated to all downstream reservoirs along the cascade system. The present findings may provide a useful management strategy to develop better restoration practices at a basin catchment scale for other lakes and reservoirs along cascade systems worldwide, especially in highly anthropogenic impacted areas, taking advantage of the propagation of water quality improvements in a downstream direction due to a domino effect triggered by the feedback from one water body to the next in a chain. • Scenarios of restoration practices were propagated along a reservoir's cascade system. • The reduction of phosphorus loads was efficient for restoration at the basin catchment scale. • The reduction of phytoplankton biomass was not propagated along the cascade system.

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