Image credit: Mary Dillane
Associate Professor Justin Brookes was one of 74 science researchers involved in recently publishing an article in Scientific Data entitled, “A global database of lake surface temperatures collected by in situ and satellite methods from 1985-2009“. This article, published by Nature, summarises a new lake temperature database.
These scientists are part of the Global Lake Temperature Collaboration (GLTC), an international group assembled to provide increased access to global lake temperature records. Since 2010 the GLTC initiative has grown to a database of 291 lakes and reservoirs worldwide, providing summer-mean lake surface temperatures from 1985-2009, significantly increasing the amount of data previously available from satellites alone. This new dataset represents the first publicly available global compilation of in situ and satellite based lake surface temperature data.
The GLTC database also provides information on climatic drivers (air temperature, solar radiation, cloud cover), as well as geomorphometric characteristics that may effect lake temperature (latitude, longitude, elevation, lake surface area, maximum depth, mean depth, volume). This unique, global dataset offers an invaluable, baseline perspective on lake thermal conditions in our ever-changing global climate.
