Lake Surface Water Temperature

Lake surface water temperature (LSWT) describes the temperature of the lake surface and is recognised internationally as an Essential Climate Variable (ECV).

A range of satellite-derived LSWT datasets have been developed by the Earth Observation and Space Research Division at the University of Reading in recent years. These products are aimed at quantifying both the long-term (since the mid 1990s) and near-real time LSWT and LSWT uncertainty for many of Earth's lakes.

LSWT projects and datasets

ARC Lake

The primary aim of the Along-TrackScanning Radiometer (ATSR) Reprocessing for Climate: Lake Surface Water Temperature & Ice Cover (ARC-Lake) project was to generate a consistent LSWT time-series from ATSR sensors for more than 250 lakes globally from 1995 to 2012.

GloboLakes

Following on from ARC-Lake, the Global Observatory of Lake Responses to Environmental Change (GloboLakes) project builds on the developments within ARC-Lake to produce LSWT at a higher spatial resolution over a longer time-period (1995 to 2016) for around 1000 lakes from additional satellite sensors (see table below). The temperatures from the different instruments have been derived with the same algorithm and harmonised to insure consistency throughout the time period.

CGLOPS

More recently, the current Global Land Component of the Copernicus Land Service (CGLOPS) projects aims to provide both historical (since 2002) and near-real time LSWT for around 1000 lakes. Unlike ARC-Lake and GloboLakes, the production of near-real time LSWT (every 10 days with a latency of 3 days) allows accurate and up-to-date monitoring of many of the Earth’s lakes.

Dataset properties and usage

The table below provides a summary of the each of the datasets arising from the projects summarised above.

	ARC Lake	GloboLakes	CGLOPS
Sensors	ATSR-2, AATSR	ATSR-2, AATSR, AVHRR (MetOp-A)	AATSR, SLSTR-A
Temporal coverage	1995 - 2012	Jun 1995 - Dec 2016	May 2002 - Mar 2012 (AATSR) Nov 2016 - present day (SLSTR)
Spatial resolution	0.05°	0.025°	0.0083° (1 km)
Temporal resolution	daily average	daily average	dekadal (10-day) average
Number of lakes processed	~250	~1000	~1000
Latest version	v3.0	v4.0
Intended usage	Research (e.g. time-series analysis)	Research (e.g. time-series analysis)	Operational activities (e.g. monitoring) and research (e.g. time-series analysis)