Modelling of Water Surface Temperature of Three Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau using a Physically Based Lake Model

ABSTRACT

This study was carried out to quantify the physical processes of lakes in the Tibetan Plateau using the Community Land Model, version 4.5 (CLM4.5), coupled with a physically based, 10-layer lake model developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The CLM was forced with 10?km resolution reanalysis data to attempt to understand detailed lake processes and how these processes affect lake surface temperature. In this study, we simulated seasonal and interannual variations of lake surface temperature for Lake Qinghai, Zhaling Co, and Nam Co in the Tibetan Plateau and compared these simulations with observations. The results showed that the CLM4.5 lake model simulations reproduced the observed lake surface temperatures for Lake Qinghai and Zhaling Co well but reproduced those for Nam Co poorly. Through detailed analysis, we found that the simulated biases for Nam Co result largely from the unrealistic parameterization of eddy diffusivity. By expanding this parameter, the lake surface temperature simulations improved remarkably. In addition, erroneous lake ice cover simulations contributed to the simulated lake surface temperature bias in the cold seasons.