With the setup of a flux mesonet in 2010, Lake Taihu, a large shallow lake located in eastern China (~2500 km2 and 2 m deep), provides an ideal testbed for the study of lake-atmosphere interactions, as well as how lake ecosystems are impacted by climate change and urbanization. My research here is to investigate the surface energy budget (SEB) at Lake Taihu, and eventually come up with a lake surface scheme for use in the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model to study the role of Taihu in the regional climate.
In this project, MODIS and Landsat images will be used and the purpose is two-fold. Firstly, we will use the MODIS product to explore the horizontal heterogeneity in surface temperature for this region. Such practice not only gives us a sense of how the SEB varies over this region, but provides an ideal dataset for validating the proposed lake surface scheme. Secondly, considering the rapid urbanization around Taihu, we intend to use the Landsat and MODIS products to construct the scenario of land cover/use change for this region, which will be then coupled into the WRF to study how the lake is impacted by climate change in conjunction with urbanization.