Open AccessSnowpack determines relative importance of climate factors driving summer lake warming
Author(s) -
Smits Adrianne P.,
MacIntyre Sally,
Sadro Steven
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
limnology and oceanography letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2378-2242
DOI - 10.1002/lol2.10147
Subject(s) - snowpack , environmental science , snow , climatology , global warming , latent heat , forcing (mathematics) , atmospheric sciences , climate change , snowmelt , sensible heat , longwave , cryosphere , meteorology , geology , sea ice , geography , oceanography , radiation , physics , quantum mechanics
Mountain lakes experience extreme interannual climate variation as well as rapidly warming air temperatures, making them ideal systems to understand lake‐climate responses. Snowpack and water temperature are highly correlated in mountain lakes, but we lack a complete understanding of underlying mechanisms. Motivated by predicted declines in snowfall with future temperature increases, we investigated how surface heat fluxes and lake warming responded to variation in snowpack, ice‐off, and summer weather patterns in a high elevation lake in the Sierra Nevada, California. Ice‐off timing determined the phenology of lake exposure to solar radiation, and was the dominant mechanism linking snowpack to lake temperature. The relative importance of heat loss fluxes (longwave radiation, latent and sensible heat exchange) varied among wet and dry years. Declines in snowpack and ice cover in mountain systems will reduce variability in lake thermal responses and increase the responsiveness of lake warming to atmospheric forcing.