Simulation of temperate freezing lakes by one-dimensional lake models : performance assessment for interactive coupling with regional climate models

A systematic assessment of the ability of two selected 1-D lake models (the model of S.W. Hostetler and the Freshwater Lake model) to simulate lake surface temperature and fluxes for different lake conditions, corresponding to typical temperate freezing lakes of North America, through a set of offline tests, is presented.Results suggest that both models perform well in shallow lakes, while important differences between modelled and observed water temperatures and ice-cover duration can be noticed in deeper lakes.These differences could be partially attributed to the biases in the driving data and most importantly to the lack of representation of complex processes in the models, such as horizontal transfer of water and heat, ice drift, etc. Sensitivity of the models to lake depth, water transparency, explicit snow and snow/ice albedo is presented and possible ways of improving the performance of the 1-D lake models are proposed.