Morphometric control of annual heat budgets in temperate lakes

Abstract

Annual heat budgets of 71 lakes in the temperate zone are strongly correlated with mean depth and area. Depth and area influences taken together are responsible for an even higher degree of correlation between heat budgets and lake volumes. For lakes of a given volume, the deeper ones of lesser area appear to take up slightly more heat than the shallower ones of greater area. Dimictic lakes exhibit slightly higher heat budgets than warm monomictic lakes of similar size. Heat uptake appears to rise continuously with increasing lake dimensions, though at a decreasing rate, up to the largest dimensions observed.