LEXPLORE PLATFORM

LéXPLORE Letters No. 4

This newsletter was generated on the 10-10-2022.

The figures below are showing data for the period 19-09-2022 to 03-10-2022.

Until today, the Idronaut sampled 3865 depth profiles on Lake Geneva. In this Newsletter we show 154 profiles, so just 0.04% of the recorded data. The complete data set is available at Datalakes.

Data highlights of this issue

For this issue we stay with the Idronaut instrument, to give you the highest amount of details for this extreme mixing event.

We jumped the gun in the last issue, talking about a striking mixing event, because this time around we got record wave heights for the wave buoy data set. September 28th brought waves higher than 1 meter to the platform, with wind peaks of more than 13 m/s. Even though our platform is equipped to withstand such weather, some of our instruments needed a little extra care afterwards.

But not the Idronaut, which recorded reliably and stubbornly the changes in the water column triggered by the atmosphere. We can identify strong mixing down to deeper than 40 meters for the two windy days of September 28th and October 1st, severely reducing the surface water temperature, conductivity and oxygen production. After the storms passed, air temperatures were on the rise and with fresh nutrients, phytoplankton and cyanobacteria are increasing in the surface layers of the lake.

What is displayed

Data from the Idronaut profiler:

  • Water Temperature in °Celsius

  • Conductivity in mS/cm

  • Dissolved Oxygen in ppm

  • Phycocyanin, a measure of the abundance of cyanobacteria, in ug/L

  • Chlorophyll A in ug/L

  • Water pH

  • Salinity in ppt

Data from the automatic weather station:

  • Air Temperature in °Celsius

  • Wind Speend in m/s

Data from the wave buoy:

  • Wave height in decimeter

Authorship and further information

This newsletter is created by EPFL, specifically Martin Wegmann.

For more information about LéXPLORE, contacting us and possibilities to visit the platform: lexplore.info

If you want to know more about the Chlorophyll distribution across Lake Geneva, have a look at the satellite data map by our colleagues at CIPEL.

If you want to know more about the water temperature distribution across Lake Geneva, have a look at the lake reanalysis and forecasts by our colleagues at EAWAG.

If you want to use figures from the LéXPLORE Letters, you can use the following citation:

EPFL, Limnology Center 2022: LéXPLORE Letters, 4, https://lexplore.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/lexplore-letters-2022-10-10.html