The role of lake heat flux in the growth and melting of ice

Cheng, Bin and Fei, Xie and Peng, Lu and Puzhen, Huo and Leppäranta, Matti (2021) The role of lake heat flux in the growth and melting of ice. Advances in Polar Science, 32 (4). pp. 364-373.

PDF Download (1MB)

Abstract

For shallow lakes, ice mass balance is largely dominated by thermodynamic processes. The heat flux from lake water plays a critical role for ice growth and melting. In this study, we applied a numerical thermodynamic lake model to investigate the sensitivity of the lake ice mass balance to the lake heat flux during the growth and melting periods. Several groups of modelling experiments forced by simplified climatological weather data have been carried out. Two sites, Lake Wuliangsuhai in Inner Mongolia, China’s arid region and Lake Orajärvi in snowy Finnish Lapland, were investigated. Lake heat flux affects inversely proportional maximum ice thickness followed by ice break-up date. The solar radiation and surface albedo complicate the effect of lake heat flux on lake ice mass balance during melting season. With heavy snowfall, the increase of lake heat flux adds on the formation of granular ice but reduces the formation of columnar ice. Under climatological weather conditions, the ice cover winter seasonal mean lake heat flux were 14 W·m−2 and 4 W·m−2 in Lake Wuliangsuhai and Lake Orajärvi, respectively.

Item Type:	Article
Related URLs:
Keywords:	shallow lakes, lake ice, heat flux, numerical modelling
Subjects:	Natural Environment > Atmosphere
Organizations:	Unspecified
Date Deposited:	15 Nov 2023 14:30
URI:	http://library.arcticportal.org/id/eprint/2769

Actions (login required)

View Item