Document Details
Extreme and compound events in lakes
R. Iestyn Woolway, Yunlin Zhang, Eleanor Jennings, Tamar Zohary, Stephen F. Jane, Joachim Jansen, Gesa A. Weyhenmeyer, Di Long, Ayan Fleischmann, Lian Feng, Boqiang Qin, Kun Shi, Haoran Shi, Weijia Wang, Yan Tong, Guoqing Zhang, Jakob Zscheischler, Ze Ren, Erik Jeppesen | August 19th, 2025
Key points
- Lake heatwaves have increased in average intensity, average duration and total duration globally, at rates of 0.15 ± 0.3 °C per decade, 2.1 ± 3.1 days per decade and 8.8 ± 7.6 days per decade, respectively, since the 1980s.
- The probability of lake heatwave events is three times more likely in a 1.5 °C warming scenario and 25 times more likely in a 3.5 °C scenario compared with pre-industrial conditions.
- Half of the world’s largest lakes experienced declines in water storage between 1992 and 2020, accompanied by corresponding reductions in surface extent.
- Extreme events in lakes can cause considerable impacts, including the onset of hypoxia, harmful algal blooms, disruption of food webs and loss of ecosystem services.
- Basin-scale anthropogenic stressors, such as nutrient enrichment, land-use change and water withdrawal, interact with climate extremes to increase the frequency, intensity and ecological consequences of in-lake extremes.
Keywords