Publication Details |
| Category | Text Publication |
| Reference Category | Journals |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.wroa.2025.100457 |
Licence  |
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| Title (Primary) | How climate change erodes short-term lake-temperature predictability: Informing climate resilient lake forecasting |
| Author | Atton Beckmann, D.; Werther, M.; Shatwell, T.; Spyrakos, E.; Hunter, P.; Jones, I.D. |
| Source Titel | Water Research X |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Page From | art. 100457 |
| Language | englisch |
| Topic | T5 Future Landscapes |
| Supplements | Supplement 1 |
| Keywords | Forecasting; Machine learning; Water quality; Climate change |
| Abstract | Climate warming threatens short-term environmental forecast skill, yet its effect on water quality predictability is largely unquantified. Here, we demonstrate a new approach for assessing climate change effects on lake forecasts. Random forest (RF) and gated recurrent unit network models were trained on data from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) Local Lakes Sector (five central-European lakes, four hydrodynamic models) and then used to forecast daily lake surface temperature 14 days ahead for 2060 - 2100 under four climate scenarios. We then varied (i) sensor-sampling interval (3, 7, 14 days) and (ii) training-set length (1 - 30 years). Under the strongest forcing (SSP585), the summer mean absolute error (MAE) of worst-affected lake, Esthwaite, rose by 0.14 °C (from 1.75 to 1.89 °C), driven by higher day-to-day temperature volatility (R² = 0.78). For this lake, extending the training set from 5 to 20 years or shortening sampling from 14 to 3 days reduced summer MAE by 0.11 and 0.17 °C, effectively offsetting the volatility caused by climate change. In winter, forecast error declined for four lakes because warmer, more stratified conditions simplified surface-layer dynamics. Thus, modest investments in monitoring cadence or historical record length can preserve forecast skill, even under extreme climate change. More broadly, this highlights a largely unexplored potential use for climate scenario projections: informing the design of climate resilient lake monitoring systems. |
| Persistent UFZ Identifier | https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=31682 |
| Atton Beckmann, D., Werther, M., Shatwell, T., Spyrakos, E., Hunter, P., Jones, I.D. (2026): How climate change erodes short-term lake-temperature predictability: Informing climate resilient lake forecasting Water Res. X 30 , art. 100457 10.1016/j.wroa.2025.100457 |
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