Satellite altimetry for monitoring lake level changes

J.-F. Crétaux (1) , A.V. Kouraev (1) , M. Bergé-Nguyen (1) , A. Cazenave (1) , F. Papa (1)

1 LEGOS - Laboratoire d'études en Géophysique et océanographie spatiales

Accurate and continuous monitoring of lakes and inland seas is possible since 1991 thanks to the recent missions of satellite altimetry (Topex-Poseidon, ERS-1, ERS-2, Jason-1 and Envisat). Global processing of the data of these satellites could provide temporal and spatial times series of lakes water level from 1991 to 2003 on the whole Earth with a decimeter precision. The response of water level to regional hydrology is particularly marked for lakes and inland seas of semi-arid regions. Altimetry data can provide an invaluable source of information in hydrology sciences, but insitu data (rivers runoff, temperature, precipitation etc.) are still strongly needed to study the evolution of water mass balance of each lake. Moreover, sea level variations that result from variation of hydrological parameters such as river discharge, precipitation and evaporation, are very sensitive indicators of regional climate variations. Recent results obtained on Aral Sea and Issykkul Lake are presented here. Inter-annual changes of water level have been obtained over these lakes that must be interpreted in term of hydrological water balance. Since 1960 the Aral sea has been drying and since 1989 it is divided into two lakes that follow different evolution, the Big Aral in the south which continuously dried up the last 10 years, while the so- called Small Aral in the north presented large inter-annual fluctuations related to constructions and destructions of a dam in the Berg’s strait retaining the water from the Syr Darya. For Issykkul, a slow decrease of the level has been observed over the last hundreds years (4cm/year), followed by an abrupt and bigger increase of the level of around 10 cm/yr since 1998. The impact on local populations and infra-structures of these fluctuations are dramatic in the case of Aral, much less in the case of Issykkul, but comparative study of both water bodies may help in the future to understand the respective consequences of human-induced activities from the natural changes. It is also the task of a new project recently submitted and accepted by the NATO with scientists from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyz Republic.

Domaines: Sciences de la Terre

J.-F. Crétaux, A.V. Kouraev, M. Bergé-Nguyen, A. Cazenave, F. Papa. Satellite altimetry for monitoring lake level changes. Transboundary Water Resources: Strategies for Regional Security and Ecological Stability, pp.141-146, 2005, ⟨10.1007/1-4020-3082-7_12⟩. ⟨hal-00280295⟩