Inland lake temperature initialization via cycling with atmospheric data assimilation
- 1NOAA Global Systems Laboratory, Boulder, CO 80305 USA
- 2Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (CIRES), University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80303 USA
- 3Civil and Engineering Department, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO USA
- 4Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA
- 5University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA
- 6NOAA National Ocean Service, Coast Survey Development Laboratory, Durham, NH 03824 USA
- 7NOAA National Weather Service, White Lake, MI, USA
- 8NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
- 9University of Massachusetts, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Amherst, MA, USA
- 1NOAA Global Systems Laboratory, Boulder, CO 80305 USA
- 2Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (CIRES), University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80303 USA
- 3Civil and Engineering Department, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO USA
- 4Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA
- 5University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA
- 6NOAA National Ocean Service, Coast Survey Development Laboratory, Durham, NH 03824 USA
- 7NOAA National Weather Service, White Lake, MI, USA
- 8NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
- 9University of Massachusetts, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Amherst, MA, USA
Abstract. Application of lake models coupled within earth-system prediction models, especially for short-term predictions from days to weeks, requires accurate initialization of lake temperatures. Here, we describe a lake initialization method by cycling within an hourly updated weather prediction model to constrain lake temperature evolution. We compare these simulated lake temperature values with other estimates from satellite and in situ and interpolated-SST data sets for a multi-month period in 2021. The lake cycling initialization, now applied to two operational US NOAA weather models, was found to decrease errors in lake temperature from as much as 5–10 K (using interpolated-SST data) to about 1–2 K (comparing with available in situ and satellite observations.
Stanley G. Benjamin et al.
Status: open (until 20 May 2022)
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CC1: 'General and editorial comments on gmd-2021-409 thru Page 13', Jack Settelmaier, 06 May 2022
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It's great to read of such a reduction in errors, from 5-10K to 1-2K. I've seen how lakes often stand out in some of the NWP-based output
our NWS use (e.g. NBM). It's interesting, as well, that some of our lakes dry up to some degree in Texas and the Southwest.
I'm sure you know, but I'm staring at 1-d use, vs 1-D. Is former really correct?
Line 128 (small-lake) vs 137 (small lake)
Line 177 "lake cycling" I'm unfamiliar with, but I assume it's the thermal turning over of the lake water. Maybe add a quick definition?
Line 202 first to mention HRRRv3 rather than just HRRR?
Line 244 FVCOM. How does that relate/differ from FV3 I see more referenced these days?
Line 256 I suppose it's also proper to be specific about Laurentian Great Lakes vs Great Lakes.
Line 279 "20 s" vs 20s vs 20 sec
Line 293 Was GLOFS deined before this mention?
Line 299 I had no idea there was 15" (inch?) MODIS data!?! Wow.
Line 323 "ocean-contiguity" new for me. Meaning connected water?
Line 332 "25-m" but above in 279 you use "20 s" Is that proper? Adjective vs noun I presume
Only reas through Page 13 today.
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CC2: 'Completing my 'General and editorial comments on gmd-2021-409'', Jack Settelmaier, 11 May 2022
reply
I have repeated, and added a few more comments after reading to the end.
It's great to read of such a reduction in errors, from 5-10K to 1-2K. I've seen how lakes often stand out in some of the NWP-based output
our NWS use (e.g. NBM). It's interesting, as well, that some of our lakes dry up to some degree in Texas and the Southwest.
I'm sure you know, but I'm staring at 1-d use, vs 1-D. Is former really correct?
Line 128 (small-lake) vs 137 (small lake)
Line 177 "lake cycling" I'm unfamiliar with, but I assume it's the thermal turning over of the lake water. Maybe add a quick definition?
Line 202 first to mention HRRRv3 rather than just HRRR?
Line 244 FVCOM. How does that relate/differ from FV3 I see more referenced these days?
Line 256 I suppose it's also proper to be specific about Laurentian Great Lakes vs Great Lakes.
Line 279 "20 s" vs 20s vs 20 sec
Line 293 Was GLOFS deined before this mention?
Line 299 I had no idea there was 15" (inch?) MODIS data!?! Wow.
Line 323 "ocean-contiguity" new for me. Meaning connected water?
Line 332 "25-m" but above in 279 you use "20 s" Is that proper? Adjective vs noun I presume
Only read through Page 13 today.
Line 422 pseudo-innovations (new term to me; despite reference, maybe worth a line of description?)
Line 485-489 Fig 7 You nicely define the difference between HRRRv3 (NCEP Oper) and HRRRv4 (HRRRx), however you do so AFTER you already have a like caption in Figure 6 where that detail is not defined (Line 454-456).
Also, I see you spell out "Figure 6." in line 454, vs "Fig. 7." in line 485Line 505 and 514 I see the way you have linked the two Tables using the "No. from Tab. 5" column in Table 6, when it seems it would just as easy to reference Table 5's Lake Number column?
Bottom-right image of Page 22, has a spurious? little "Plot Area" overlay on the Lake Tahoe chart?
Line 605 "the lake depth for most lakes is too deep" Should that be "the HRRR-CLM simulated environment lake depth...."?
Line 624 (D22, J22) refers to?
Line 663, 669 "US NWS" and "US NOAA" Maybe the former could be "US NOAA NWS?"
Line 685-690 Will those author references remain as initials?
Thank you so much for allowing me to review the paper; I learned more on a topic that was previously unfamiliar with, and learned some new words (e.g. dimictic, polymictic, and monomictic).
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CC2: 'Completing my 'General and editorial comments on gmd-2021-409'', Jack Settelmaier, 11 May 2022
reply
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AC1: 'Comment on gmd-2021-409', Stan Benjamin, 13 May 2022
reply
Thanks to Jack Settelmaier (US) for a review of our lake initialization paper.
Responses are shown below as bullets and in italics.
It's great to read of such a reduction in errors, from 5-10K to 1-2K. I've seen how lakes often stand out in some of the NWP-based output for our NWS use (e.g. NBM). It's interesting, as well, that some of our lakes dry up to some degree in Texas and the Southwest.
- Thanks for your NWS perspective. We appreciate very much your very helpful suggestions.
I'm sure you know, but I'm staring at 1-d use, vs 1-D. Is former really correct?
- We couldn’t find a preferred style for GMD in this area, so we used 1-d consistently and presumed that could be corrected later if needed by the technical editor.
Line 128 (small-lake) vs 137 (small lake)
- You are right – we added hyphens to ‘inland-small-lake’ on line 137 since it is a compound modifier (adjective) when hyphens are appropriate.
Line 177 "lake cycling" I'm unfamiliar with, but I assume it's the thermal turning over of the lake water. Maybe add a quick definition?
- We have now defined the phrase, “lake cycling”, back on line 118 in the context of lake and lake evolution forced by ongoing atmospheric fields.
Line 202 first to mention HRRRv3 rather than just HRRR?
- We added a reference to a list of HRRR versions in that same caption. We hope that’s enough.
Line 244 FVCOM. How does that relate/differ from FV3 I see more referenced these days?
- FVCOM, a 3-d water hydrodynamic model, has no relationship to the FV3 3-d atmospheric model now being used increasingly for NOAA weather models. Both of them happen to use the ‘finite-volume’ modeling technique (which is why ‘FV’ is in both names), which is used by dozens of different fluid dynamic models.
Line 256 I suppose it's also proper to be specific about Laurentian Great Lakes vs Great Lakes.
- Right, thanks for bringing this up, and yes, especially with the international readership for GMD, it’s important to be specific on Laurentian Great Lakes, and we had tried to do that throughout the paper including on line 256.
Line 279 "20 s" vs 20s vs 20 sec
- We think that we used the correct notation, ’20 s’, according to the GMD manuscript composition guidelines. Thanks for getting us to check again.
Line 293 Was GLOFS defined before this mention?
- No, GLOFS had not been mentioned before.
Line 299 I had no idea there was 15" (inch?) MODIS data!?! Wow.
- The MODIS 15” data uses the degree/minute/second spatial notation, i.e., ~111km, ~2km, 0.03km. So, 15” means about 0.5 km.
Line 323 "ocean-contiguity" new for me. Meaning connected water?
- Yes, it means connected water areas.
Line 332 "25-m" but above in 279 you use "20 s" Is that proper? Adjective vs noun I presume
- We discovered that the GMD guidelines indicates their ‘house rules’ is to not hyphenate modifiers. So, ‘2-m’ modifiers have been changed to ‘2 m’ throughout the manuscript.
Line 422 pseudo-innovations (new term to me; despite reference, maybe worth a line of description?)
- To define ‘pseudo-innovations’, we expanded the parenthetical expression to this: ‘James and Benjamin, 2017, meaning estimated observation-background forecast differences but not actual’. Given that this is a lake-modeling GMD issue, we’d rather not try to go further than that. Yes, really inquisitive readers will have to go to the reference.
Line 485-489 Fig 7 You nicely define the difference between HRRRv3 (NCEP Oper) and HRRRv4 (HRRRx), however you do so AFTER you already have a like caption in Figure 6 where that detail is not defined (Line 454-456).
- We have changed this caption to refer solely to HRRRv3 vs. HRRRv4 corresponding to the versions without and with the lake cycling.
Also, I see you spell out "Figure 6." in line 454, vs "Fig. 7." in line 485- Figure 7 is now spelled out – thanks.
Line 505 and 514 I see the way you have linked the two Tables using the "No. from Tab. 5" column in Table 6, when it seems it would just as easy to reference Table 5's Lake Number column?
- We were just trying to help some readers to refer back more easily to Table 5 with this column in Table 6.
Bottom-right image of Page 22, has a spurious? little "Plot Area" overlay on the Lake Tahoe chart?
- Fixed – thanks.
Line 605 "the lake depth for most lakes is too deep" Should that be "the HRRR-CLM simulated environment lake depth...."?
- Good point. Language wording was changed to this with new wording underlined below: “On the average, the current specified values for mean lake depth for most lakes is too deep compared to reality, since the preprocessing with the K12 dataset simply assigned a single lake depth value (maximum or mean) to all grid points for that lake even up to the modeled lake points adjacent to land, as shown in Table 5 for 16 or the 19 lakes studied.”
Line 624 (D22, J22) refers to?
- Those refer to Dowell et al 2022 and James et al 2022, and those abbreviations are now defined back on lines ~157-158
Line 663, 669 "US NWS" and "US NOAA" Maybe the former could be "US NOAA NWS?"
- We preferred to call the forecasters from NWS but use ‘NOAA’ only for the model since it was developed by NOAA including parts outside of NWS.
Line 685-690 Will those author references remain as initials?
- Yes – that is the suggested convention for this author contributions section and readers can figure out very easily who is who.
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RC1: 'Comment on gmd-2021-409', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 May 2022
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This manuscript investigates a very important question of coupling lake to weather model. it is an important challenges for local predictions. in that sense, this study is an important one. I however do not support the publication of the current version of this manuscript for the following reasons:
- It is very difficult to follow the scientific content of the paper. The manuscript seems to be very well suited for an internal report - where readers already know about the models details - and less to a scientific manuscript. The manuscript has to be profondly revised. I do not see how other research group can benefit from this study with the current layout. I need much more technical details for a paper in GMD. Note that I am not questionning the quality of the work here.
- litterature review. The litterature review missed many important contributions on the two way coupling lake atmosphere exchanges. I have added a non exhaustive list: I was surprised to not see references to COSMO/FLAKE (http://www.borenv.net/BER/archive/pdfs/ber15/ber15-218.pdf , http://www.cosmo-model.org/content/model/modules/flake/), Simstrat (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04061-6), CRCM (https://doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2000.9649657 ) etc
- Figures. I do not see the added values of most figures showing maps of North America. Figures looks more like print screens than carefully designed visual information
- L37 “errors in lake temperature from as much as 5-10K ” I am not aware of any model with such range of error. This error range does not make sense.
- L86 “However, lake temperature initialization is still a problem. “ It is not clear why it is a problem. 1-D models are fast to run and can easily be run for long period with no memory from the initial conditions.
- I question the reproducibility of this study. The authors do not provide their codes/working examples. Again, I do not see how other research group can benefit from this study. This study is not FAIR-compliant and do not make a contribution valid for GMD in the present form
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AC2: 'Reply on RC1', Stan Benjamin, 19 May 2022
reply
Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for a review of our lake initialization paper.
Responses are shown below as bullets and in italics.
This manuscript investigates a very important question of coupling lake to weather model. it is an important challenges for local predictions. in that sense, this study is an important one. I however do not support the publication of the current version of this manuscript for the following reasons:
- Thanks very much for giving careful thought to our manuscript. We have some responses below to your concerns and suggestions. You are right that our manuscript does not add detail to the code structure of any lake model including the CLM lake model that we used. Instead, our paper was written to describe a lake initialization method unique in the United States, long-term forcing of the lake model at small lake points with hourly updated atmospheric conditions. In the US, the NOAA atmospheric models, up to this point, have been using a much simpler method using horizontally interpolated SST data to small lake points from values from much larger and usually far deeper bodies of water.
- It is very difficult to follow the scientific content of the paper. The manuscript seems to be very well suited for an internal report - where readers already know about the models details - and less to a scientific manuscript. The manuscript has to be profondly revised. I do not see how other research group can benefit from this study with the current layout. I need much more technical details for a paper in GMD. Note that I am not questionning the quality of the work here.
- We presented early results on our data assimilation technique at the LAKE-2019 workshop in Toulouse. We were encouraged to submit a manuscript for this special GMD issue for papers based on presentations from that meeting even though our study was the initialization method. We added to the title of Section 2 that the Problem addressed in our paper is the Initialization Problem:
L161: 2 The Initialization Problem
- litterature review. The litterature review missed many important contributions on the two way coupling lake atmosphere exchanges. I have added a non exhaustive list: I was surprised to not see references to COSMO/FLAKE (http://www.borenv.net/BER/archive/pdfs/ber15/ber15-218.pdf , http://www.cosmo-model.org/content/model/modules/flake/), Simstrat (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-04061-6), CRCM (https://doi.org/10.1080/07055900.2000.9649657 ) etc
- Thank you for the references. The first of them (COSMO/FLake, Mironov et al 2010) was already referenced in the previous manuscript in the introduction but we have now added it to point out that COSMO produced a year-round reference dataset for lake temperatures. Moreover, we have added references to initialization for FLake by the Met Office and the original climatology data from Ekaterina Kournezova et al (a new reference not previously cited).
Below is the new rewritten section L91-110, new/modified text is underscored:
However, lake temperature initialization can still be a problem. Use of spatial interpolation to smaller lakes from larger (and deeper) lakes, or from the ocean, for lake initialization (e.g., Mallard et al, 2015) can exaggerate this seasonal slower response. Shallow lakes warm more slowly in spring than surrounding land, but more quickly than nearby deeper lakes. Even in summer, it will take at least 1-2 weeks for 1-d models to adjust from values interpolated from deeper-lake temperatures to become more realistic for shallow lakes. Therefore, lake temperature initialization becomes the most important factor to accurately simulate sensible and latent heat fluxes from lakes for short to medium-range NWP, more so than the use of the lake model itself. One option to solve the lake initialization problem is to use a model-based climatology for seasonal variation of lake temperatures (Balsamo et al (2012) and Balsamo (2013), ECMWF) using a 1-d lake model forced by reanalysis data. The 1-d model used by ECMWF is the 2-layer FLake (Freshwater Lake Model) model (Mironov et al, 2010, Balsamo et al, 2012, Boussetta et al, 2021) implemented into their Integrated Forecast System (IFS) in 2015. A similar technique was applied by Mironov et al (2010) using FLake for the COSMO model. Kourzeneva et al (2012a) describe application of 20-year reanalysis data to a global lake dataset using FLake for this lake temperature climatology. This technique avoids a new spin-up with each new run, but cannot capture unique weather regime variations in a given region and time. The UK Met Office uses satellite data to update their lake surface water temperatures using the previous day values as a background (Fiedler et al, 2014). Another option, described here, is lake cycling with the ongoing 1-d lake prediction model fully coupled with an NWP model, a cost-free option if the atmospheric conditions are relatively accurate.
- Figures. I do not see the added values of most figures showing maps of North America. Figures looks more like print screens than carefully designed visual information.
- Figures 1 and 2 are informational to give some idea on the horizontal lake representation in the 3km HRRR model. They will be of sufficient quality to be expanded for detailed visual inspection in the final article.
- L37 “errors in lake temperature from as much as 5-10K ” I am not aware of any model with such range of error. This error range does not make sense.
- Thanks very much for asking this question, and it allows us to further underscore the main purpose of our technique and paper. Unfortunately, NOAA in the US has been using, for lake temperatures, a horizontal interpolation of deep-water SST data (see our Fig. 3 and related discussion). Many of the different lakes in our key results in our Fig. 9 show likely temperature errors of 5K and even up to 10K (e.g., lake #15 in Fig. 9 in July). We would agree that there could not be lake temperature difference of 5-10K comparing a reanalysis-driven annual lake temperature data and what we have done with real-time cycling. But we have definitely found such differences compared with the NOAA SST data with horizontal interpolation to small lakes.
- L86 “However, lake temperature initialization is still a problem. “ It is not clear why it is a problem. 1-D models are fast to run and can easily be run for long period with no memory from the initial conditions.
- We changed the wording from “… is still “ to “can still be” in what is now L91 (see earlier response). You are right - the use of the reanalysis-driven generations of lake temperature climatology has been effective but had not used yet by NOAA. So, our effort is unique within NOAA. Perhaps the cycling of ongoing prediction of the lake temperatures through the model (every 20 seconds for 3km HRRR) is unique also.
- We have revised Table 4 to reflect the additional lake initialization treatment used by the Met Office but also to distinguish the 2-way cycling from the reanalysis-driven lake climatology. As of this writing today, we co-authors are gathering more information on the Met Office effort and applications toward NWP of the Copernicus lake surface water temperature data.
Consequences (to right) from strategy for lake initialization (below)
Coupling lake and atmosphere within initialization
Lake temps in spring-summer
Lake temps in fall
SST interpolation to small lakes
None
Much too cold, especially for shallow lakes
Still generally too cold but intermittently too warm after cold-air outbreaks.
Lake annual variation forced by reanalysis atmospheric data – 1-way cycling from atmospheric forcing
1-way
More accurate. No weather regime variation in a given year
More accurate. Will not capture variation from weather regimes in a given year.
Daily updating with satellite data
None
More accurate but cannot keep up with changes during cloudy periods.
More accurate but cannot keep up with changes during cloudy periods.
2-way cycling
2-way
More accurate including response to specific yearly/seasonal anomalies.
More accurate including yearly/seasonal anomalies
- I question the reproducibility of this study. The authors do not provide their codes/working examples. Again, I do not see how other research group can benefit from this study. This study is not FAIR-compliant and do not make a contribution valid for GMD in the present form.
- The effort to reproduce this study would be very large, since it is an outcome from a 3km model integrated over much of North America for a few years. However, the code necessary to match a shorter period is shown in the code availability statement (through the community WRF model) and the HRRR data are also available for an initialization through Amazon Web Services as shown in the data availability statement. The availability statements are after the text, now in L729-738 in the new version.
Thank you again for raising key questions that have resulted in important improvements in our manuscript. Do our responses clarify our purpose and at least partially address your concerns?
Stanley G. Benjamin et al.
Stanley G. Benjamin et al.
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