Assessing the Impact of Lakes Abaya and Chamo on Regional Climate: Insights from WRF-Chemistry Simulations in Arba Minch, Ethiopia

Lakes play an important role in the water cycle by storing surface water from precipitation, snowmelt, and glacier melt. On the other hand, their interactions with the surfaces of the land and water have either been ignored or only superficially investigated. The high thermal inertia of lakes has the potential to have a considerable impact on regional climate. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of Abaya and Chamo Lakes on the air temperature of Arba Minch using WRF-Chemistry model simulation results, both with and without lakes. The result was analyzed based on temperature data from 10/1/2020 to 11/11/2020. WRF-Chemistry model was utilized to simulate the temperature of the study area. WRF-Chemistry models performed strongly in terms of r (0.88) with control, r (0.89) with simulated without Lake, and r (0.77) with flat topography condition. The diurnal temperature variations shows rising trend from 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM and decreasing rapidly. The peak temperature occurs between 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM. The observed temperature is higher than the simulated results, except for flat topography at nighttime. The study showed that the presence of Lake Abaya and Lake Chamo significantly affects local weather condition in Arba Minch, with lower temperatures in highlands. The lake's energy absorption and release during the wet and dry seasons contribute to the Arba Minch's temperature anomaly.