Browsing by Autor "Cesar Gamarra"

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Modeling Lake Titicaca Daily and Monthly Evaporation
(2018) Ramiro Pillco Zolá; Lars Bengtsson; Ronny Berndtsson; Belén Martí-Cardona; Frédéric Satgé; F. Timouk; Marie‐Paule Bonnet; Luis Mollericon; Cesar Gamarra; José Pasapera
Abstract. Lake Titicaca is an important water ecosystem of South America. Due to uncertainties in estimating the evaporation losses from the lake, surface water storage calculations are uncertain. In this paper, we try to improve evaporation loss estimations by comparing different methods to calculate daily and monthly evaporation from Lake Titicaca. These were: water balance, heat balance, mass transfer method, and the Penman equation. The evaporation was computed at daily time step and compared with estimated evaporation using mean monthly meteorological observations. We found that the most reliable method of determining the annual lake evaporation is using the heat balance approach. To estimate the monthly lake evaporation using heat balance, the heat storage changes must be known in advance. Since convection from the surface layer is intense during nights resulting in a well-mixed top layer every morning, it is possible to determine the change of heat storage from the measured morning surface temperature. The mean annual lake evaporation was found to be 1700 mm. Monthly evaporation computed using daily data and monthly means resulted in minor differences.
Modelling Lake Titicaca's daily and monthly evaporation
(Copernicus Publications, 2019) Ramiro Pillco Zolá; Lars Bengtsson; Ronny Berndtsson; Belén Martí-Cardona; Frédéric Satgé; F. Timouk; Marie‐Paule Bonnet; Luis Mollericon; Cesar Gamarra; José Pasapera
Abstract. Lake Titicaca is a crucial water resource in the central part of the Andean mountain range, and it is one of the lakes most affected by climate warming. Since surface evaporation explains most of the lake's water losses, reliable estimates are paramount to the prediction of global warming impacts on Lake Titicaca and to the region's water resource planning and adaptation to climate change. Evaporation estimates were done in the past at monthly time steps and using the four methods as follows: water balance, heat balance, and the mass transfer and Penman's equations. The obtained annual evaporation values showed significant dispersion. This study used new, daily frequency hydro-meteorological measurements. Evaporation losses were calculated following the mentioned methods using both daily records and their monthly averages to assess the impact of higher temporal resolution data in the evaporation estimates. Changes in the lake heat storage needed for the heat balance method were estimated based on the morning water surface temperature, because convection during nights results in a well-mixed top layer every morning over a constant temperature depth. We found that the most reliable method for determining the annual lake evaporation was the heat balance approach, although the Penman equation allows for an easier implementation based on generally available meteorological parameters. The mean annual lake evaporation was found to be 1700 mm year−1. This value is considered an upper limit of the annual evaporation, since the main study period was abnormally warm. The obtained upper limit lowers by 200 mm year−1, the highest evaporation estimation obtained previously, thus reducing the uncertainty in the actual value. Regarding the evaporation estimates using daily and monthly averages, these resulted in minor differences for all methodologies.