Spatiotemporal Lake Skin Summer Temperature Trends in the Northeast United States

Lakes have been suggested as an indicator of climate change; however, long-term, systematic records of lake temperature are limited. Satellite remote sensing is capable of supporting lake temperature mapping with the advantage of large-area and systematic observations. The goal of this research application was to assess spatiotemporal trends in lake skin temperature for all lakes over 8 ha across northern New England for the past three decades. Nearly 10 000 Landsat scenes for July, August, and September from 1984 to 2014 were processed using MODTRAN and MERRA parameterizations to generate atmospherically corrected lake skin temperature records. Results show, on average, lakes warmed at a rate of 0.8°C decade−1, with smaller lakes warming at a faster rate. Complementing regression and space–time analyses showed similar results (R2 = 0.63) for lake temperature trends and found lakes, on average, are warming faster than daily maximum or minimum air temperature. No major hot spots were found as lake ...