Sebastiano Piccolroaz

The role of stratification on lakes' thermal response: The case of Lake Superior

During the last several decades, the Great Lakes region has been experiencing a significant rise in temperatures, with the extraordinary summer warming that affected Lake Superior in 1998 as an example of the marked response of the lake to increasingly warmer atmospheric conditions. In this work, we combine the analysis of this exceptional event with some synthetic scenarios, to achieve a deeper understanding of the main processes driving the thermal dynamics of surface water temperature in Lake Superior. The analysis is performed by means of the lumped model air2water, which simulates lake surface temperature as a function of air temperature alone. The model provides information about the seasonal stratification dynamics, suggesting that unusual warming events can result from two factors: anomalously high summer air temperatures, and increased strength of stratification resulting from a warm spring. The relative contribution of the two factors is quantified using the model by means of synthetic scenarios, which provide a simple but effective description of the positive feedback between the thermal behavior and the stratification dynamics of the lake.

A hybrid model for river water temperature as a function of air temperature and discharge

Water temperature controls many biochemical and ecological processes in rivers, and theoretically depends on multiple factors. Here we formulate a model to predict daily averaged river water temperature as a function of air temperature and discharge, with the latter variable being more relevant in some specific cases (e.g., snowmelt-fed rivers, rivers impacted by hydropower production). The model uses a hybrid formulation characterized by a physically based structure associated with a stochastic calibration of the parameters. The interpretation of the parameter values allows for better understanding of river thermal dynamics and the identification of the most relevant factors affecting it. The satisfactory agreement of different versions of the model with measurements in three different rivers (root mean square error smaller than 1oC, at a daily timescale) suggests that the proposed model can represent a useful tool to synthetically describe medium- and long-term behavior, and capture the changes induced by varying external conditions.

On the use of spatially distributed, time‐lapse microgravity surveys to inform hydrological modeling

In the last decades significant technological advances together with improved modeling capabilities fostered a rapid development of geophysical monitoring techniques in support of hydrological modeling. Geophysical monitoring offers the attractive possibility to acquire spatially distributed information on state variables. These provide complementary information about the functioning of the hydrological system to that provided by standard hydrological measurements, which are either intrinsically local or the result of a complex spatial averaging process. Soil water content is an example of state variable, which is relatively simple to measure pointwise (locally) but with a vanishing constraining effect on catchment-scale modeling, while streamflow data, the typical hydrological measurement, offer limited possibility to disentangle the controlling processes. The objective of this work is to analyze the advantages offered by coupling traditional hydrological data with unconventional geophysical information in inverse modeling of hydrological systems. In particular, we explored how the use of time-lapse, spatially distributed microgravity measurements may improve the conceptual model identification of a topographically complex Alpine catchment (the Vermigliana catchment, South-Eastern Alps, Italy). The inclusion of microgravity data resulted in a better constraint of the inversion procedure and an improved capability to identify limitations of concurring conceptual models to a level that would be impossible relying only on streamflow data. This allowed for a better identification of model parameters and a more reliable description of the controlling hydrological processes, with a significant reduction of uncertainty in water storage dynamics with respect to the case when only streamflow data are used.

Testing the Hydrological Coherence of High‐Resolution Gridded Precipitation and Temperature Data Sets

Testing the Hydrological Coherence of High-Resolution Gridded Precipitation and Temperature Data Sets

Crossing the Boundaries of Physical Limnology

Scientists who study the physics of inland and coastal water bodies met in Trento, Italy in July for the 17th in a series of workshops that seek to expand cooperation with researchers in related fields. The workshops aim to facilitate the dialogue among physical limnologists, modelers, and colleagues from other disciplines, such as biologists, chemists, and engineers. This years workshop was attended by 47 participants from 17 different countries. ©2014 The Authors.