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ABSTRACT
Two one-dimensional (1-D) column lake models have been coupled interactively with a developmental version of the Canadian Regional Climate Model. Multidecadal reanalyses-driven simulations with and without lakes revealed the systematic biases of the model and the impact of lakes on the simulated North American climate.
The presence of lakes strongly influences the climate of the lake-rich region of the Canadian Shield. Due to their large thermal inertia, lakes act to dampen the diurnal and seasonal cycle of low-level air temperature. In late autumn and winter, ice-free lakes induce large sensible and latent heat fluxes, resulting in a strong enhancement of precipitation downstream of the Laurentian Great Lakes, which is referred to as the snow belt.
The FLake (FL) and Hostetler (HL) lake models perform adequately for small subgrid-scale lakes and for large resolved lakes with shallow depth, located in temperate or warm climatic regions. Both lake models exhibit specific strengths and weaknesses. For example, HL simulates too rapid spring warming and too warm surface temperature, especially in large and deep lakes; FL tends to damp the diurnal cycle of surface temperature. An adaptation of 1-D lake models might be required for an adequate simulation of large and deep lakes.
7. Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS), the Ministère du Développement Économique, Innovation et Exportation (MDEIE) of Québec Government, the Ouranos Consortium on Regional Climatology and Adaptation to Climate Change and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The authors thank Georges Huard, Abderrahim Khaled and Nadjet Labassi for maintaining an efficient and user-friendly local computing facility. Authors are thankful to Leo Separovic for consultations on statistical data treatment, to Homa Kheyrollah Pour for MODIS-based surface temperature data for the Great Slave Lake and to lake model authors, Steven W. Hostetler for the HL model and Dmitry Mironov for the FL model.