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ESA CCI Lake

ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Lake

Sub-Sahelian African Lakes

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The ESA CCI LAKE dedicated a project to sentinel lakes in the sub-Sahel part of Africa. The project is led by the National Reserach Council of Italy (CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) and it is a joint effort of the CNR and the University of Reading.

Two journal articles summarises the work undertaken within the project:

Article 1

Amadori M, Greife AJ, Carrea L, Pinardi M, Caroni R, Calamita E, Serrao L, Maidmnt R, Bordoni S, Giardino C, Bresciani M, Fava F, Schmid M, Ndebele-Murisa M, Nhiwatiwa T, Cretaux J-F, Merchant CJ, Liu X, Simis S, Lomeo D, Yesou H, Albergel C, Woolway RI (2025) A climatological baseline for understanding patterns of seasonal lake dynamics across sub-Sahelian Africa. Communications Earth & Environment, 6:681. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02684-5

Article 2

Greife AJ, Calamita E, Pinardi M, Carrea L, Maidment RI, Pitarch J, Ndebele-Murisa MR, Giardino C, Bresciani M, Fava FP, Albergel C, Amadori M (2026) Effects of reduced precipitation and water level variability on phytoplankton dynamics and thermal structure in a large tropical reservoir. Water Resources Research, 62(10):e2026WR043749. https://doi.org/10.1029/2026WR043749

This site is dedicated to the collection of all the plots that have been generated for Article 1:

The work leading to Article 1 was dedicated to exploring the lake-climate interaction for 137 lakes in Africa using the ESA CCI LAKES data, the ERA5 Land data for the meteorological variables and the TAMSAT and CHIRP data for the rainfall.

The following lake variables from the ESA CCI LAKES dataset v2.1 have been utilised:

  • Lake Surface Water temperature (LSWT)
  • Lake Water Leaving Reflectance (LWLR)
  • Lake chrophyll-a concentration (chla)
  • Lake turbidity (turb)
  • Lake water level (LWL)

The following meteorological variables from ERA5 Land have been utilised:

  • Air temperature at 2m
  • Shortwave solar radiation
  • Surface presssure
  • Relative humidity
  • Wind speed