Abstract
Abstract. The spatial and temporal coverage of the Landsat satellite imagery make it an ideal resource for the monitoring of water temperature over large territories at a moderate spatial and temporal scale at a low cost. We used Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 archive images to create the Lake Skin Surface Temperature (LakeSST) data set, which contains skin water surface temperature data for 442 French water bodies (natural lakes, reservoirs, ponds, gravel pit lakes and quarry lakes) for the period 1999–2016. We assessed the quality of the satellite temperature measurements by comparing them to in situ measurements and taking into account the cool skin and warm layer effects. To estimate these effects and to investigate the theoretical differences between the freshwater and seawater cases, we adapted the COARE 3.0 algorithm to the freshwater environment. We also estimated the warm layer effect using in situ data. At the reservoir of Bimont, the estimated cool skin effect was about −0.3 and −0.6 °C most of time, while the warm layer effect at 0.55 m was negligible on average, but could occasionally attain several degrees, and a cool layer was often observed in the night. The overall RMSE of the satellite-derived temperature measurements was about 1.2 °C, similar to other applications of satellite images to estimate freshwater surface temperatures. The LakeSST data can be used for studies on the temporal evolution of lake water temperature and for geographical studies of temperature patterns. The LakeSST data are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1193745.
Highlights
Surface water temperature (SWT) is a key water quality parameter driving the ecological status of lakes (e.g. Shuter and Post, 1990; O’Reilly et al, 2003)
Satellite-derived water temperature data are relevant and sufficient to (i) demonstrate spatial and temporal patterns of surface water temperature for reservoirs and lakes (e.g. Schneider et al, 2009; Schneider and Hook, 2010; Prats and Danis, 2015), (ii) complement the data used for the calibration and validation of hydrodynamic and water quality models of lakes (Andréassian et al, 2012; Prats and Danis, 2017), and (iii) improve the estimation of surface heat and gas fluxes (Lofgren and Zhu, 2000) that is important to understand the thermal behaviour of lakes (Henderson-Sellers, 1986)
Kantha and Clayson, 1994; Fairall et al, 1996a; Kawai and Kawamura, 2000; Gentemann et al, 2009). To analyse both the cool skin and the warm layer effects for the case of the reservoir of Bimont, we used the model proposed by Fairall et al (1996a) and implemented in the COARE bulk flux algorithm (Fairall et al, 1996b), that depends on the surface heat and moment fluxes
Summary
Surface water temperature (SWT) is a key water quality parameter driving the ecological status of lakes (e.g. Shuter and Post, 1990; O’Reilly et al, 2003). Schneider et al, 2009; Schneider and Hook, 2010; Prats and Danis, 2015), (ii) complement the data used for the calibration and validation of hydrodynamic and water quality models of lakes (Andréassian et al, 2012; Prats and Danis, 2017), and (iii) improve the estimation of surface heat and gas fluxes (Lofgren and Zhu, 2000) that is important to understand the thermal behaviour of lakes (Henderson-Sellers, 1986) This data paper presents the data set LakeSST of skin surface water temperature for 442 French lake water bodies derived from Landsat thermal infrared imagery. The overall accuracy of LakeSST is assessed (i) by using water bodies located in overlapping areas of the images, and (ii) by comparing them to in situ continuous temperature measurements in five water bodies
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