Abstract
Most high-altitude lakes are more sensitive to global warming than the regional atmosphere. However, most existing climate models produce unrealistic surface temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) lakes, and few studies have focused on the influence of ice surface albedo on high-altitude lakes. Based on field albedo measurements, moderate resolution imaging spectrometer (MODIS) albedo products and numerical simulation, this study evaluates the ice albedo parameterization schemes in existing lake models and investigates the characteristics of the ice surface albedo in six typical TP lakes, as well as the influence of ice albedo error in the FLake model. Compared with observations, several ice albedo schemes all clearly overestimate the lake ice albedo by 0.26 to 0.66, while the average bias of MODIS albedo products is only 0.07. The MODIS-observed albedo of a snow-covered lake varies with the snow proportion, and the lake surface albedo in a snow-free state is approximately 0.15 during the frozen period. The MODIS-observed ice surface (snow-free) albedos are concentrated within the ranges of 0.14–0.16, 0.08–0.10 and 0.10–0.12 in Aksai Chin Lake, Nam Co Lake and Ngoring Lake, respectively. The simulated lake surface temperature is sensitive to variations in lake ice albedo especially in the spring and winter.
Highlights
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) contains numerous lakes with a total area of 4.7 × 104 km2 [1], and approximately 389 lakes are larger than 10 km2 [2]
The long-term moderate resolution imaging spectrometer (MODIS) albedo products are employed to analyze the characteristics of the surface albedo on TP lakes during the frozen period, and the FLake model is used to illustrate the effects of the inaccurate albedo parameterizations of the model
The four parameterization schemes (CLM4.5, FLake, weather research and forecasting model (WRF), and WRF-FLake) are evaluated against the in-situ observation collected in Ngoring Lake in 2014 and 2017 (Figure 3)
Summary
The Tibetan Plateau (TP) contains numerous lakes with a total area of 4.7 × 104 km2 [1], and approximately 389 lakes are larger than 10 km2 [2]. In the TP, a few studies have shown that the LST rises even faster than regional air temperature in summer [9] These lakes are located on the third pole of the Earth, where the cold climate leads to a long frozen period (four to six months) for the TP lakes [10]. Based on MODIS albedo products (MCD43A3, MOD10A1/MYD10A1) and field observation data, researchers investigated the ice surface albedo of Malcolm Ramsay Lake in Canada (with little snow cover), and found that it was greater than 0.6; the error of MCD43A3 product was smallest [24]. There are three types of ice surface albedo schemes in lake models and coupled climate models. The long-term MODIS albedo products are employed to analyze the characteristics of the surface albedo on TP lakes during the frozen period, and the FLake model is used to illustrate the effects of the inaccurate albedo parameterizations of the model. The MOD10A1 product is used to consider percentage of snow-covered pixels of Aksai Chin Lake (1 to 16 January 2014), which includes the snow-covered albedo, snow cover proportion, quality information and other metadata at a spatial resolution of 500 m [31,41]
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