Stable isotopes in global lakes integrate catchment and climatic controls on evaporation

Yuliya Vystavna,Leonard I Wassenaar,Lucilena R Monteiro,Ioannis Matiatos,Astrid Harjung

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-27569-x

Yuliya Vystavna, Leonard I Wassenaar + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27569-x

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Journal: Nature Communications	Publication Date: Dec 1, 2021
Citations: 38	License type: open-access

Affiliation: International Atomic Energy Agency

Abstract

Global warming is considered a major threat to Earth’s lakes water budgets and quality. However, flow regulation, over-exploitation, lack of hydrological data, and disparate evaluation methods hamper comparative global estimates of lake vulnerability to evaporation. We have analyzed the stable isotope composition of 1257 global lakes and we find that most lakes depend on precipitation and groundwater recharge subsequently altered by catchment and lake evaporation processes. Isotope mass-balance modeling shows that ca. 20% of water inflow in global lakes is lost through evaporation and ca. 10% of lakes in arid and temperate zones experience extreme evaporative losses >40 % of the total inflow. Precipitation amount, limnicity, wind speed, relative humidity, and solar radiation are predominant controls on lake isotope composition and evaporation, regardless of the climatic zone. The promotion of systematic global isotopic monitoring of Earth’s lakes provides a direct and comparative approach to detect the impacts of climatic and catchment-scale changes on water-balance and evaporation trends.

Highlights

Global warming is considered a major threat to Earth’s lakes water budgets and quality
Lake evaporation is driven by a suite of hydroclimatic and environmental factors including solar radiation, lake and catchment surface area, climate type, albedo, wind speed, relative humidity, air temperature, and heat storage[1,2,3,4]
Provides an estimate of the lake water origin, whereas the displacement distance from the input value along the local evaporation lines” (LEL) reveals the extent of evaporation loss of the lake in relation to the inflow, as expressed by the evaporation to inflow (E/I) ratio[15,19]

Summary

Introduction

Global warming is considered a major threat to Earth’s lakes water budgets and quality. Lake evaporation is driven by a suite of hydroclimatic and environmental factors including solar radiation, lake and catchment surface area, climate type, albedo, wind speed, relative humidity, air temperature, and heat storage[1,2,3,4].

Results

Conclusion