Evaporative water loss of 1.42 million global lakes

Gang Zhao; Yao Li; Liming Zhou; Huilin Gao

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-31125-6

Evaporative water loss of 1.42 million global lakes

Nat Commun. 2022 Jun 28;13(1):3686. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-31125-6.

Authors

Gang Zhao^{1

2}, Yao Li², Liming Zhou³, Huilin Gao⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA.
² Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA.
³ Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY, 12222, USA.
⁴ Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA. hgao@civil.tamu.edu.

Abstract

The evaporative loss from global lakes (natural and artificial) is a critical component of the terrestrial water and energy balance. However, the evaporation volume of these water bodies-from the spatial distribution to the long-term trend-is as of yet unknown. Here, using satellite observations and modeling tools, we quantified the evaporation volume from 1.42 million global lakes from 1985 to 2018. We find that the long-term average lake evaporation is 1500 ± 150 km³ year^-1 and it has increased at a rate of 3.12 km³ year^-1. The trend attributions include an increasing evaporation rate (58%), decreasing lake ice coverage (23%), and increasing lake surface area (19%). While only accounting for 5% of the global lake storage capacity, artificial lakes (i.e., reservoirs) contribute 16% to the evaporation volume. Our results underline the importance of using evaporation volume, rather than evaporation rate, as the primary index for assessing climatic impacts on lake systems.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Lakes*
Water*

Substances

Water