Global database was developed to represent lakes in atmospheric models
The global lake database comprises ca. 13 000 freshwater lakes and 500 saline lakes. For each lake, its name, country, coordinates, the surface area and the mean depth are provided. This information was collected from regional databases, water cadastres and public sources. The database is implemented into atmospheric models for weather forecasting and for climate change studies. It may be used also for other environmental applications.
An atmospheric model which includes a lake model needs data about lake depth and lake coverage. Lake depth information is not easy to obtain, because depth can’t be observed from remote sensing, only instrumental measurements are possible.
Lake depth information is mapped onto a raster land cover map with the resolution of approximately 1 kilometer. For mapping, a probabilistic mapping method was developed and applied. Apart from the mean depth, for 36 large lakes the bathymetry is included.
Both data for individual lakes and the lake depth map can be freely downloaded from web (http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/flake/). The database started in 2005 and is being developed by the numerical weather prediction community in Europe. FMI participates actively in these developments, providing a general guidance. The database is described in detail in the manuscript:
More information:
Researcher Ekaterina Kurzeneva, Ekaterina.Kurzeneva@fmi.fi
Kourzeneva, E., H. Asensio, E. Martin, and S. Faroux, 2012: Global gridded dataset of lake coverage and lake depth for use in numerical weather prediction and climate modelling. Tellus A 2012, 64, 15640, DOI: 10.3402/tellusa.v64i0.15640.
