Projected cooling in a subtropical lake despite climate warming

Yael Amitai (), Yoav Levi () and Edoardo Bucchignan ()
Additional contact information
Yael Amitai: Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, Kinneret Limnological Institute
Yoav Levi: Israel Meteorological Service
Edoardo Bucchignan: CIRA, Italian Aerospace Research Center

Climatic Change, 2025, vol. 178, issue 12, No 13, 23 pages

Abstract: Abstract Located in a highly climate-sensitive region, the subtropical Lake Kinneret is expected to undergo significant changes in the coming decades. It is a monomictic lake situated between subtropical and arid climatic belts, where warmer and drier atmospheric conditions are expected to develop, as highlighted in IPCC reports. Changes in the lake’s stratification properties have been already observed and are predicted to become more pronounced. Using high-resolution projections from COSMO-CLM and low-resolution projections from MIROC5 atmospheric simulations to drive a 3D hydrodynamic model, we reveal an unexpected abrupt cooling of the lake’s water around the year 2065 despite the climatic warming. This cooling is preceded by a weakening of stratification starting around 2055. Model results indicate a significant reduction in the Bowen ratio, with latent heat flux becoming predominant over sensible heat flux. Consequently, evaporative cooling events lead to enhanced mixing and a warmer hypolimnion. The degradation of stratification stability continues until an abrupt shift to high mixing potential and a colder water column occurs. This internal negative feedback, which restrains the lake’s warming, can be indicative of unexpected outcome of climate warming in subtropical lakes worldwide.

Keywords: Climate belts; Subtropical lake; Lake Kinneret; Hydrodynamical Model; Bowen ratio; Evaporetive cooling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-025-04068-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:178:y:2025:i:12:d:10.1007_s10584-025-04068-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-025-04068-2

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().