TY - JOUR
T1 - Satellite Laser Altimetry Reveals a Net Water Mass Gain in Global Lakes With Spatial Heterogeneity in the Early 21st Century
AU - Luo, Shuangxiao
AU - Song, Chunqiao
AU - Ke, Linghong
AU - Zhan, Pengfei
AU - Fan, Chenyu
AU - Liu, Kai
AU - Chen, Tan
AU - Wang, Jida
AU - Zhu, Jingying
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2018YFD0900804, 2019YFA0607101, 2018YFD1100101), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA23100102), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (Grant No. 2019QZKK0202), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41971403, 41801321, 42101402), and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BK20210990).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2022/2/16
Y1 - 2022/2/16
N2 - Lake water storage changes are important factors that influence the climate, hydrological cycle, and environments. However, long-term estimation of global lake storage changes is challenging because historical in-situ hydrological observations worldwide are rarely available. Benefiting from the laser altimeter ICESat and ICESat-2, we comprehensively assessed water level and volume changes in global natural lakes larger than 10 km2 during 2003–2020. The 6,567 lakes observable by ICESat/ICESat-2, which account for ∼94% of the total global lake volume, showed a total water storage increase of 10.88 ± 16.45 Gt/yr during 2003–2020, and the estimate reaches 16.12 ± 20.41 Gt/yr when also taking account of the remaining unobserved lakes. Despite water gains in most natural lakes, large lakes under dry and high water-stress conditions experienced dramatic water loss in general. Presumably, these drying lakes may continue to shrink with a warming climate and continuously increasing water demands in the future without further action.
AB - Lake water storage changes are important factors that influence the climate, hydrological cycle, and environments. However, long-term estimation of global lake storage changes is challenging because historical in-situ hydrological observations worldwide are rarely available. Benefiting from the laser altimeter ICESat and ICESat-2, we comprehensively assessed water level and volume changes in global natural lakes larger than 10 km2 during 2003–2020. The 6,567 lakes observable by ICESat/ICESat-2, which account for ∼94% of the total global lake volume, showed a total water storage increase of 10.88 ± 16.45 Gt/yr during 2003–2020, and the estimate reaches 16.12 ± 20.41 Gt/yr when also taking account of the remaining unobserved lakes. Despite water gains in most natural lakes, large lakes under dry and high water-stress conditions experienced dramatic water loss in general. Presumably, these drying lakes may continue to shrink with a warming climate and continuously increasing water demands in the future without further action.
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U2 - 10.1029/2021GL096676
DO - 10.1029/2021GL096676
M3 - Letter
AN - SCOPUS:85125072133
SN - 0094-8276
VL - 49
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
IS - 3
M1 - e2021GL096676
ER -