Exploring the Satellite-Derived Lakes Variables for Climate Studies

Lakes are crucial sources of freshwater and significant indicators of environmental change on a global level. They are reacting quickly to climate change, and it is expected that in coming decades global warming will have an even more pronounced impact on biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and hydrology. To support the comprehension of this topic at global scale as well as for understanding the complicated behaviour of lakes in a changing environment, satellite technologies provide a unique source of data. In such a context, Lakes_cci project recently provided the most complete collection of consistent satellite observations water level, water extent, lake surface water temperature, water-leaving reflectance and related chlorophyll-a concentration and turbidity and ice cover. The products span from 1992 to 2020 and quantifies over 2000 relatively large lakes, which represent a small fraction of the number of lakes worldwide but a significant fraction of global freshwater surface. To illustrate the project's scientific contribution, two use-cases are described in this study along with the main properties of the dataset.