Historical and prehistorical water levels of Mormon Lake, Arizona as a measure of climate change on the southwest Colorado Plateau, USA

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Richard Hereford ◽  
Lee Amoroso
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Colorado Plateau ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Lake Levels ◽  
Average Precipitation ◽  
Hydrologic Balance ◽  
Endorheic Basin ◽  
Historical Levels

Abstract Mormon Lake, elevation 2166 m with maximum historic surface area of 31.4 km2, lies in a forested endorheic basin covering 103 km2. It is the largest unaltered freshwater body on the 337,000 km2 Colorado Plateau. Prehistorical (before AD 1878) highstands were ca. 9 and 24 m relative to depocenter datum. These levels likely occurred during four multidecadal episodes of cool, wet conditions between ca. 3.55 and 0.20 ka BP. Maximum historical levels (early 1900s) were up to 7.9 m, whereas modern (post-1941) levels were frequently zero or relatively low. Historical climate records indicate reconstructed lake levels correlate directly with annual precipitation and inversely with temperature. Early highstands were associated with above average precipitation and the lowest temperatures of the 116 yr record. The lake receded after 1941; thereafter, frequent drying and low-water levels resulted from recurrent drought and steadily increasing temperatures. Consequently, a wet episode from the 1970s to the 1990s had precipitation like the early 1900s, but highstands were only ca. 3.8 m. The historical lake-level chronology is consistent with changes of hydrologic balance predicted by climate models, that is, reduced effective precipitation (precipitation minus evaporation). These changes, particularly aridification, apparently began in the 1970s or earlier. Global oceanic and atmospheric climate modulate lake levels and regional hydroclimate.

scholarly journals Fluctuations of Lake Orta water levels: preliminary analyses

2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmi Saidi ◽  
Claudia Dresti ◽  
Marzia Ciampittiello
Keyword(s):  
Return Period ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Maximum Level ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Positive Trend ◽  
Flood Events ◽  
Lake Levels ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
Significant Positive Trend ◽  
Rivers And Lakes

While the effects of past industrial pollution on the chemistry and biology of Lake Orta have been well documented, annual and seasonal fluctuations of lake levels have not yet been studied. Considering their potential impacts on both the ecosystem and on human safety, fluctuations in lake levels are an important aspect of limnological research. In the enormous catchment of Lake Maggiore, there are many rivers and lakes, and the amount of annual precipitation is both high and concentrated in spring and autumn. This has produced major flood events, most recently in November 2014. Flood events are also frequent on Lake Orta, occurring roughly triennially since 1917. The 1926, 1951, 1976 and 2014 floods were severe, with lake levels raised from 2.30 m to 3.46 m above the hydrometric zero. The most important event occurred in 1976, with a maximum level equal to 292.31 m asl and a return period of 147 years. In 2014 the lake level reached 291.89 m asl and its return period was 54 years. In this study, we defined trends and temporal fluctuations in Lake Orta water levels from 1917 to 2014, focusing on extremes. We report both annual maximum and seasonal variations of the lake water levels over this period. Both Mann-Kendall trend tests and simple linear regression were utilized to detect monotonic trends in annual and seasonal extremes, and logistic regression was used to detect trends in the number of flood events. Lake level decreased during winter and summer seasons, and a small but statistically non-significant positive trend was found in the number of flood events over the period. We provide estimations of return period for lake levels, a metric which could be used in planning lake flood protection measures.

scholarly journals Changing Pattern of Water Level Trends in Eurasian Endorheic Lakes as a Response to the Recent Climate Variability

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 3705
Author(s):  
Xin Zhang ◽  
Abilgazi Kurbaniyazov ◽  
Georgiy Kirillin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Climatic Factors ◽  
Hydrological Regime ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Lake Levels ◽  
Mongolian Plateau ◽  
Recent Climate

Lake level is a sensitive integral indicator of climate change on regional scales, especially in enclosed endorheic basins. Eurasia contains the largest endorheic zone with several large terminal lakes, whose water levels recently underwent remarkable variations. To address the patterns of these variations and their links to the climate change, we investigated the variability of levels in 15 lakes of three neighboring endorheic regions—Central Asia, Tibetan Plateau, and Mongolian Plateau. Satellite altimetry revealed a heterogeneous pattern among the regions during 1992–2018: lake levels increased significantly in Central Asia and the Tibetan Plateau but decreased on the Mongolian Plateau. The shifts to the increasing trend were detected since 1997 in Central Asia, since 1998 in the southern part of the Tibetan Plateau, and since 2005 in its northern part. The shift in air temperatures around 1997 and the precipitation shifts around 1998 and 2004 contributed to the trend’s turning points, with precipitation being the major contributor to the heterogeneous pattern of lake levels. Our findings reveal the linkage of the heterogeneous pattern of lake levels to climatic factors in the endorheic basins, providing a further understanding of the hydrological regime in the Eurasian endorheic zone and its sensitivity to climate change.

scholarly journals Modelling the water balance of Lake Victoria (East Africa) – Part 2: Future projections

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 5527-5549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inne Vanderkelen ◽  
Nicole P. M. van Lipzig ◽  
Wim Thiery
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Balance ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Emission Scenario ◽  
Lake Victoria ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Climate Models ◽  
Management Scenario ◽  
Dam Management

Abstract. Lake Victoria, the second largest freshwater lake in the world, is one of the major sources of the Nile river. The outlet to the Nile is controlled by two hydropower dams of which the allowed discharge is dictated by the Agreed Curve, an equation relating outflow to lake level. Some regional climate models project a decrease in precipitation and an increase in evaporation over Lake Victoria, with potential important implications for its water balance and resulting level. Yet, little is known about the potential consequences of climate change for the water balance of Lake Victoria. In this second part of a two-paper series, we feed a new water balance model for Lake Victoria presented in the first part with climate simulations available through the COordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) Africa framework. Our results reveal that most regional climate models are not capable of giving a realistic representation of the water balance of Lake Victoria and therefore require bias correction. For two emission scenarios (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5), the decrease in precipitation over the lake and an increase in evaporation are compensated by an increase in basin precipitation leading to more inflow. The future lake level projections show that the dam management scenario and not the emission scenario is the main controlling factor of the future water level evolution. Moreover, inter-model uncertainties are larger than emission scenario uncertainties. The comparison of four idealized future management scenarios pursuing certain policy objectives (electricity generation, navigation reliability and environmental conservation) uncovers that the only sustainable management scenario is mimicking natural lake level fluctuations by regulating outflow according to the Agreed Curve. The associated outflow encompasses, however, ranges from 14 m3 day−1 (−85 %) to 200 m3 day−1 (+100 %) within this ensemble, highlighting that future hydropower generation and downstream water availability may strongly change in the next decades even if dam management adheres to he Agreed Curve. Our results overall underline that managing the dam according to the Agreed Curve is a key prerequisite for sustainable future lake levels, but that under this management scenario, climate change might potentially induce profound changes in lake level and outflow volume.

scholarly journals Providing a long-term hydroclimatic perspective for the recent extreme decline of Lake Prespa (SW Balkans) through quantitative reconstruction of lake water-balance changes over the past 5000 years

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim van der Schriek ◽  
Christos Giannakopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Lake Water ◽  
Water Loss ◽  
Water Surface ◽  
Lake Level ◽  
Open Water ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lake Water Balance

<p>Ancient lakes throughout the Mediterranean are at risk of disappearing due to a combination of climate change and human impacts. The growing imbalance between water availability and demand is creating unprecedented ecological problems. There is an urgent need for better understanding the patterns of natural lake water variability to improve water resource management and conservation. The incorporation of long-term cycles is particularly important for assessing low frequency – high magnitude trends in lake water levels.</p><p>The Ohrid-Prespa Lake system is amongst the oldest permanent lake systems in Europe, with an age of >1 million years, and hosts a globally significant biodiversity. The closed-basin Prespa Lakes are particularly sensitive to climatic variability with long-term water level changes informing on the dynamic balance between [1] runoff and precipitation supplying water to the lakes, and [2] water loss from the lakes by evaporation and underground karst outflow.</p><p>The large, ongoing, fall of the Prespa Lakes that started in 1987 threatens the biodiversity and water resources of the interconnected lake system. This decline is caused by climate change, specifically by decreases of 10% in precipitation and 25% in runoff, amplified by water abstraction. There is no precedent for this water level fall in the observational record (1951-present), although geological archives indicate equally low water levels at least twice over the past five millennia. </p><p>Here we present the first quantified estimates of changes in the lake water balance over time that are based on the strong relationship between open water surface area and water loss. This quantification allows direct comparison of lake low- and highstand events across time and assessing magnitudes of regional hydro-climatic changes. This study uses a novel approach that reconstructs absolute lake levels and related open water surface areas for different past periods, using the landform-sediment record.</p><p>The hydro-climate of the Prespa catchment shows a drying trend of since the mid Holocene. The recent (2001-2018) lake lowstand is the most significant over the past 700 years in terms of water loss changes. A lake lowstand period of a similar magnitude occurred about 2000 years ago. The most extreme lowstand period over the past 5000 years occurred between 1100-800 years ago during the Medieval Climate Anomaly, when water loss changes were >50% higher compared to the present lowstand. However, the renewed decline in lake level and surface area since 2019 requires close monitoring; if lake level falls a further 2m to 840m.a.s.l. it would become the largest recorded fall over the entire Holocene, with unknown impacts for the wider system.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Economic damages from Hurricane Sandy attributable to sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate change

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin H. Strauss ◽  
Philip M. Orton ◽  
Klaus Bittermann ◽  
Maya K. Buchanan ◽  
Daniel M. Gilford ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
East Coast ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hurricane Sandy ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Sea Levels

AbstractIn 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States, creating widespread coastal flooding and over $60 billion in reported economic damage. The potential influence of climate change on the storm itself has been debated, but sea level rise driven by anthropogenic climate change more clearly contributed to damages. To quantify this effect, here we simulate water levels and damage both as they occurred and as they would have occurred across a range of lower sea levels corresponding to different estimates of attributable sea level rise. We find that approximately $8.1B ($4.7B–$14.0B, 5th–95th percentiles) of Sandy’s damages are attributable to climate-mediated anthropogenic sea level rise, as is extension of the flood area to affect 71 (40–131) thousand additional people. The same general approach demonstrated here may be applied to impact assessments for other past and future coastal storms.

scholarly journals Surface Water Temperature Predictions at a Mid-Latitude Reservoir under Long-Term Climate Change Impacts Using a Deep Neural Network Coupled with a Transfer Learning Approach

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1109
Author(s):  
Nobuaki Kimura ◽  
Kei Ishida ◽  
Daichi Baba
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Surface Water ◽  
Water Temperature ◽  
Transfer Learning ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Temporal Variations ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Surface Water Temperature

Long-term climate change may strongly affect the aquatic environment in mid-latitude water resources. In particular, it can be demonstrated that temporal variations in surface water temperature in a reservoir have strong responses to air temperature. We adopted deep neural networks (DNNs) to understand the long-term relationships between air temperature and surface water temperature, because DNNs can easily deal with nonlinear data, including uncertainties, that are obtained in complicated climate and aquatic systems. In general, DNNs cannot appropriately predict unexperienced data (i.e., out-of-range training data), such as future water temperature. To improve this limitation, our idea is to introduce a transfer learning (TL) approach. The observed data were used to train a DNN-based model. Continuous data (i.e., air temperature) ranging over 150 years to pre-training to climate change, which were obtained from climate models and include a downscaling model, were used to predict past and future surface water temperatures in the reservoir. The results showed that the DNN-based model with the TL approach was able to approximately predict based on the difference between past and future air temperatures. The model suggested that the occurrences in the highest water temperature increased, and the occurrences in the lowest water temperature decreased in the future predictions.

scholarly journals Multiple climate change-driven tipping points for coastal systems

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick L. Barnard ◽  
Jenifer E. Dugan ◽  
Henry M. Page ◽  
Nathan J. Wood ◽  
Juliette A. Finzi Hart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Sandy Beaches ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
Socioeconomic Impacts ◽  
Hazard Exposure ◽  
Coastal Systems ◽  
Projected Changes

AbstractAs the climate evolves over the next century, the interaction of accelerating sea level rise (SLR) and storms, combined with confining development and infrastructure, will place greater stresses on physical, ecological, and human systems along the ocean-land margin. Many of these valued coastal systems could reach “tipping points,” at which hazard exposure substantially increases and threatens the present-day form, function, and viability of communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Determining the timing and nature of these tipping points is essential for effective climate adaptation planning. Here we present a multidisciplinary case study from Santa Barbara, California (USA), to identify potential climate change-related tipping points for various coastal systems. This study integrates numerical and statistical models of the climate, ocean water levels, beach and cliff evolution, and two soft sediment ecosystems, sandy beaches and tidal wetlands. We find that tipping points for beaches and wetlands could be reached with just 0.25 m or less of SLR (~ 2050), with > 50% subsequent habitat loss that would degrade overall biodiversity and ecosystem function. In contrast, the largest projected changes in socioeconomic exposure to flooding for five communities in this region are not anticipated until SLR exceeds 0.75 m for daily flooding and 1.5 m for storm-driven flooding (~ 2100 or later). These changes are less acute relative to community totals and do not qualify as tipping points given the adaptive capacity of communities. Nonetheless, the natural and human built systems are interconnected such that the loss of natural system function could negatively impact the quality of life of residents and disrupt the local economy, resulting in indirect socioeconomic impacts long before built infrastructure is directly impacted by flooding.

scholarly journals The effects of ENSO, climate change and human activities on the water level of Lake Toba, Indonesia: a critical literature review

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendri Irwandi ◽  
Mohammad Syamsu Rosid ◽  
Terry Mart
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Continuous Increase ◽  
The Future

AbstractThis research quantitatively and qualitatively analyzes the factors responsible for the water level variations in Lake Toba, North Sumatra Province, Indonesia. According to several studies carried out from 1993 to 2020, changes in the water level were associated with climate variability, climate change, and human activities. Furthermore, these studies stated that reduced rainfall during the rainy season due to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the continuous increase in the maximum and average temperatures were some of the effects of climate change in the Lake Toba catchment area. Additionally, human interventions such as industrial activities, population growth, and damage to the surrounding environment of the Lake Toba watershed had significant impacts in terms of decreasing the water level. However, these studies were unable to determine the factor that had the most significant effect, although studies on other lakes worldwide have shown these factors are the main causes of fluctuations or decreases in water levels. A simulation study of Lake Toba's water balance showed the possibility of having a water surplus until the mid-twenty-first century. The input discharge was predicted to be greater than the output; therefore, Lake Toba could be optimized without affecting the future water level. However, the climate projections depicted a different situation, with scenarios predicting the possibility of extreme climate anomalies, demonstrating drier climatic conditions in the future. This review concludes that it is necessary to conduct an in-depth, comprehensive, and systematic study to identify the most dominant factor among the three that is causing the decrease in the Lake Toba water level and to describe the future projected water level.

scholarly journals Regions of intensification of extreme snowfall under future warming

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lennart Quante ◽  
Sven N. Willner ◽  
Robin Middelanis ◽  
Anders Levermann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Observational Data ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Average Intensity ◽  
High Latitudes ◽  
Future Warming

AbstractDue to climate change the frequency and character of precipitation are changing as the hydrological cycle intensifies. With regards to snowfall, global warming has two opposing influences; increasing humidity enables intense snowfall, whereas higher temperatures decrease the likelihood of snowfall. Here we show an intensification of extreme snowfall across large areas of the Northern Hemisphere under future warming. This is robust across an ensemble of global climate models when they are bias-corrected with observational data. While mean daily snowfall decreases, both the 99th and the 99.9th percentiles of daily snowfall increase in many regions in the next decades, especially for Northern America and Asia. Additionally, the average intensity of snowfall events exceeding these percentiles as experienced historically increases in many regions. This is likely to pose a challenge to municipalities in mid to high latitudes. Overall, extreme snowfall events are likely to become an increasingly important impact of climate change in the next decades, even if they will become rarer, but not necessarily less intense, in the second half of the century.

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