Lakes as components of the Tibetan Plateau climate system (LaTiCS): Internal mixing processes and lake-atmosphere interaction

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Georgiy Kirillin
• Subject Area: Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 315160123

• Final Report Year: 2021

Final Report Abstract

The bilateral German-Chinese project joined together two research teams with complementary experience and joint research interests. The project was dedicated to revealing specific features of the thermal and mixing regime of lakes on Tibetan Plateau at time scales from turbulent to seasonal ones, and to studying the characteristics of energy and water cycle at the interface between atmosphere and lakes. The major focus of the project was put on providing the missing information about the feedbacks and mechanisms of the thermal regime of lakes on the Tibetan Plateau. The specific study sites were freshwater Ngoring Lake (the largest lake in the Yellow River source region of the Tibetan Plateau and the highest freshwater lake on the Tibetan Plateau) and brackish Lake Qinghai, which is the largest lake of China. Acquiring new in situ information on internal lake dynamics and lake-atmosphere interaction over the Tibetan Plateau constituted a crucial novel part of the project. During the project, we installed a moored station in Lake Ngoring, providing first data on the lake heat budget and mixing during the ice-covered period. Several field campaigns on both lakes were complemented with coupled lake-atmosphere modeling and analysis of remote sensing data that allowed revealing specific features of the lake heat budget, lake-atmosphere interaction. The major drivers for the revealed specific mechanisms are the high solar radiation and low precipitation at the Tibetan Plateau. Their combined effects are non-linear and not easily recognizable in the air-land interaction over the complex terrain spotted with thousands of lakes and have to be taken into account carefully when considering any large-scale processes on the Plateau. Our results underscore the lack of in situ observations and the need for continuous monitoring programs on the Tibetan Plateau The insight in the previously unknown features of the air-land interactions on the Tibetan Plateau has the potential to find an effective application in lake parameterization schemes of the large-scale land surface models promising by this an improvement of numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate projections for arid and alpine regions. In addition, the data obtained on temperature, heat fluxes and solar radiation provide a comprehensive benchmark for model verification and tuning.

Publications

• (2017). Seasonal thermal regime and climatic trends in lakes of the Tibetan highlands. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 21(4), 1895-1909
  Kirillin, G., Wen, L., & Shatwell, T.
  
• (2018). New profiling and mooring records help to assess variability of Lake Issyk-Kul and reveal unknown features of its thermohaline structure. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 22(12), 6279-6295
  Zavialov, P. O., Izhitskiy, A. S., Kirillin, G. B., Khan, V. M., Konovalov, B. V., Makkaveev, P. N, Zhumaliev, K. M.
  
• (2019) Ice cover decay and heat balance in Lake Kilpisjärvi in Arctic tundra, Journal of Limnology
  Leppäranta M.，Kirillin G.，Wen L.
  
• (2019) Numerical study on the response of the largest lake in China to climate change, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 23(4): 2093-2109
  Su D.， Hu X.， Wen L., … Kirillin, G.
  
• (2020). Effects of the Largest Lake of the Tibetan Plateau on the Regional Climate. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125(22)
  Su, D., Wen, L., Gao, X., … Kirillin, G.
  
• (2020). Turbulence in the stratified boundary layer under ice: observations from Lake Baikal and a new similarity model. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 24(4), 1691-1708
  Kirillin, G., Aslamov, I., Kozlov, V., Zdorovennov, R., & Granin, N.
  
• (2021). An Automatic Method to Detect Lake Ice Phenology Using MODIS Daily Temperature Imagery. Remote Sensing, 13(14), 2711
  Zhang, X., Wang, K., & Kirillin, G.
  
• (2021). Ice‐covered lakes of Tibetan Plateau as solar heat collectors. Geophysical Research Letters, e2021GL093429
  Kirillin, G. B., Shatwell, T., & Wen, L.
  
• (2021). Lake heatwaves under climate change. Nature, 589(7842), 402-407
  Woolway, R. I., Jennings, E., Shatwell, T., Golub, M., Pierson, D. C., & Maberly, S. C.