Estimating ice breakup dates on Eurasian lakes using water temperature trends and threshold surface temperatures derived from MODIS data

Abstract

Ice breakup dates on lakes have a confirmed relationship with the local climates and are useful as a quantitative indicator of climate change, especially in the middle‐high latitudes. Many lakes on the Eurasian continent freeze over in winter, but data on their ice breakup dates are incomplete. In this study, we attempt to infer ice breakup dates for 18 lakes on the Eurasian continent using the proposed method based on long‐term surface temperature (water temperature trend) and threshold surface temperature. The threshold surface temperature was estimated using reflectance data from the near infrared band together with surface temperature data derived from MODIS. After obtaining the estimated ice breakup dates, we compared them with observed results in order to evaluate our proposed method for ice breakup date estimation. According to this comparison, the estimation error of the ice breakup dates was less than three days. In the last stage of this study, we estimated the ice breakup dates at the centres of 18 Eurasian lakes from 2001 to 2003. The mean ice breakup dates on these lakes in 2002 were two weeks earlier than in 2003 and one week earlier than in 2001.