Analysis of Climate Change Effects on Surface Temperature in Central-Italy Lakes Using Satellite Data Time-Series

Abstract

Evaluation of the impact of climate change on water bodies has been one of the most discussed open issues of recent years. The exploitation of satellite data for the monitoring of water surface temperatures, combined with ground measurements where available, has already been shown in several previous studies, but these studies mainly focused on large lakes around the world. In this work the water surface temperature characterization during the last few decades of two small–medium Italian lakes, Lake Bracciano and Lake Martignano, using satellite data is addressed. The study also takes advantage of the last space-borne platforms, such as Sentinel-3. Long time series of clear sky conditions and atmospherically calibrated (using a simplified Planck’s Law-based algorithm) images were processed in order to derive the lakes surface temperature trends from 1984 to 2019. The results show an overall increase in water surface temperatures which is more evident on the smallest and shallowest of the two test sites. In particular, it was observed that, since the year 2000, the surface temperature of both lakes has risen by about 0.106 °C/year on average, which doubles the rate that can be retrieved by considering the whole period 1984–2019 (0.053 °C/year on average).