Predicting Lake Titicaca Daily and Monthly Evaporation

Séminaire de Ramiro Pillco-Zola, jeudi 22 juin 2017 à 13 h, salle 105 OSUG-B

Résumé : During the last two years it has been investigated the point based evaporation flux from open water of Titicaca Lake at daily and moth scale, based on typical theoretical models like : Energy balance, Mass transfer and Combined, using high temporal resolution data (2014-2017), and on which it would be able to better estimate evaporation for Titicaca Lake. Also we have applied the water balance model and combined approach for long-term evaporation calculations in order to understand the climatic functioning and trend sensitivity.
One of the most important water balance components of the Titicaca Lake is evaporation from the open water surface. In this regard, the evaporation represents more than 90% of the lake water balance. Thus, the remaining 10% correspond to discharge from the lake into the downstream Poopó Lake. All previous research have emphasized that lake evaporation is crucial for the hydrological status of the Titicaca Lake.
It was discussed extensively the uniform behavior of evaporation flux that is expected to occur over the year, characterized by cooling all the time ; moreover the vapor pressure deficit in some seasons might conditioning the high evaporation like was found for winter month. Since this perspective, one of the best models predicting at month scale could be the Penman (combined) approach, also as it has been founded the evaporation Penman (combined) model at daily scale might predict the uniform patter in better way. In long-term computation, especially when we use water balance approach, even the input data base is not one of the best, it can be observed the low month prediction during the rainy season as a rule and with standing peak of evaporation in April when the lake due to rainy period recharge extends the surface area ad as well the evaporation fluxes.

Séminaire de Ramiro Pillco-Zolá (professeur, Universidad Mayor de San Andrès de la Paz, Bolivie, à l’Institut d’Hydraulique et Hydrologie) animé par Céline Duwig (IGE-Hydrimz)