Spatial and temporal surface temperature patterns across the Dead Sea as investigated from thermal images and thermodyna
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Spatial and temporal surface temperature patterns across the Dead Sea as investigated from thermal images and thermodynamic concepts Ibrahim M. Oroud 1 Received: 22 June 2020 / Accepted: 22 July 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The annual cycle of the Dead Sea surface temperature was investigated using band 10 onboard Landsat 8 during 2017–2018 and thermodynamic concepts. Retrieved Dead Sea temperatures are congruent with field observations with a mean square error of 1.22 °C and a correlation coefficient of 0.983. A new method employing thermodynamic concepts is presented in this paper to address the influence of buoyant plumes generated by freshwater influx on evaporation from hypersaline lakes/lagoons. Thermal images reveal a distinct spatial temperature pattern across the Dead Sea which reflects differential heating and cooling caused by variations in thermophysical characteristics of the deep sea compared with the shallow shoreline. The temperature patterns are negatively skewed in winter and positively skewed in summer. These temporal and spatial temperature patterns were illustrated using observed hourly data combined with energy balance calculations. The presence of buoyant plumes is found to alter evaporation compared with the undisturbed sea brine, and the effect of these plumes on evaporation is controlled by the simultaneous departure of temperature and activity compared with the undisturbed sea brine. Analysis shows that evaporation from buoyant plumes is more likely to be smaller than that from the open sea in winter and larger than its corresponding part from the open sea in summer. Thermal images can be used as surrogates to intensive field campaigns to examine temperature and evaporation regimes of lakes/salt flats.
1 Introduction Hypersaline water bodies are important geophysical features developing in endorheic basins in arid and semiarid areas where the water balance is negative for the most part of the annual cycle (e.g., Schreiber and El Tabakh 2000; Warren 2016). Many of these water bodies have vast reserves of mined resources. The Dead Sea, the Great Salt Lakes, and Urmia Lake are prime examples of these water bodies. Hypersaline lakes have unique thermophysical properties which significantly influence their thermal regimes. The surface-atmosphere interactions across these water body differ substantially from those encountered over freshwater (e.g., Folchitto 1991; Groenveld et al. 2010; Oroud 2011). Energy and mass transport across the interface are time dependent due to the strong non-linear thermodynamic feedback mechanisms imposed by atmospheric forcings (Oroud 2018). The annual * Ibrahim M. Oroud [email protected] 1
Mu’tah University, Karak, Jordan
cycles of solar radiation and air temperature create considerable feedback which influences evaporation and temperature difference between sea surface and the nearby contiguous atmosphere. As a result of these transcendental coupling mechanisms, the annual cycles of surface tempe
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