A framework for ensemble modelling of climate change impacts on lakes worldwide : the ISIMIP Lake Sector

Empirical evidence demonstrates that lakes and reservoirs are warming across the globe. Consequently, there is an increased need to project future changes in lake thermal structure and resulting changes in lake biogeochemistry in order to plan for the likely impacts. Previous studies of the impacts of climate change on lakes have often relied on a single model forced with limited scenario-driven projections of future climate for a relatively small number of lakes. As a result, our understanding of the effects of climate change on lakes is fragmentary, based on scattered studies using different data sources and modelling protocols, and mainly focused on individual lakes or lake regions. This has precluded identification of the main impacts of climate change on lakes at global and regional scales and has likely contributed to the lack of lake water quality considerations in policy-relevant documents, such as the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here, we describe a simulation protocol developed by the Lake Sector of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) for simulating climate change impacts on lakes using an ensemble of lake models and climate change scenarios for ISIMIP phases 2 and 3. The protocol prescribes lake simulations driven by climate forcing from gridded observations and different Earth system models under various representative greenhouse gas concentration pathways (RCPs), all consistently bias-corrected on a 0.5 degrees x 0.5 degrees global grid. In ISIMIP phase 2, 11 lake models were forced with these data to project the thermal structure of 62 well-studied lakes where data were available for calibration under historical conditions, and using uncalibrated models for 17 500 lakes defined for all global grid cells containing lakes. In ISIMIP phase 3, this approach was expanded to consider more lakes, more models, and more processes. The ISIMIP Lake Sector is the largest international effort to project future water temperature, thermal structure, and ice phenology of lakes at local and global scales and paves the way for future simulations of the impacts of climate change on water quality and biogeochemistry in lakes.Peer reviewe

Space Weather Effects from Observations by Moscow University Cubesat Constellation

Moscow State University is developing a project for a multi-satellite constellation intended for the monitoring of space radiation. A number of small satellites of CubeSat format were launched into selected orbits crossing the wide range of magnetic drift shells. The primary scope for the project is the operational monitoring of near-Earth’s radiation environment, i.e., fluxes of electrons and protons of Earth’s radiation belts and energetic particles of solar and galactic origin. To date, there are four CubeSat satellites operating in near-Earth orbits, which deliver scientific and telemetric data. Thus, for the first time, a unique multi-satellite constellation has been implemented, which makes it possible to simultaneously measure the particle and quantum fluxes at different areas in the near-Earth space using the same type of instruments. A special compact detector of gamma quanta and energetic charged particles (electrons and protons) DeCoR has been developed to carry out radiation monitoring by CubeSats. With their help, observations of various effects of space weather have been made. These effects include a variety of electron fluxes in the outer belt during geomagnetic activity in late November–early December 2021, filling of polar caps by solar energetic particles accelerated in flares occurring in late October–early November, and the existence of stable electron fluxes near the geomagnetic equator

Space Weather Effects from Observations by Moscow University Cubesat Constellation

Moscow State University is developing a project for a multi-satellite constellation intended for the monitoring of space radiation. A number of small satellites of CubeSat format were launched into selected orbits crossing the wide range of magnetic drift shells. The primary scope for the project is the operational monitoring of near-Earth’s radiation environment, i.e., fluxes of electrons and protons of Earth’s radiation belts and energetic particles of solar and galactic origin. To date, there are four CubeSat satellites operating in near-Earth orbits, which deliver scientific and telemetric data. Thus, for the first time, a unique multi-satellite constellation has been implemented, which makes it possible to simultaneously measure the particle and quantum fluxes at different areas in the near-Earth space using the same type of instruments. A special compact detector of gamma quanta and energetic charged particles (electrons and protons) DeCoR has been developed to carry out radiation monitoring by CubeSats. With their help, observations of various effects of space weather have been made. These effects include a variety of electron fluxes in the outer belt during geomagnetic activity in late November–early December 2021, filling of polar caps by solar energetic particles accelerated in flares occurring in late October–early November, and the existence of stable electron fluxes near the geomagnetic equator