Deep water renewal in Lake Baikal: A model for long-term analyses

The phenomenon of deep water renewal in the South Basin of Lake Baikal is investigated by means of a simplified one-dimensional model. The downwelling process, whereby large volumes of superficial, cold, and oxygenated water periodically sink to the lake bottom (>1400m) due to thermobaric instability, is simulated by means of three main submodules: a reaction-diffusion equation for temperature and other tracers, and two Lagrangian algorithms, the first for the vertical stabilization of unstable density regions (including thermobaric effects) and the second handling the downwelling mechanism. A self-consistent procedure for the dynamical reconstruction of the diapycnal diffusivity profile is included to account for the effect of the variability of external conditions. The model has been developed aimed at providing a detailed description of deep-ventilation and a quantification of its consequences at the basin scale; the core algorithms have been designed suitably to perform long-term simulations (hundreds of years) and to deal with a limited amount of information about boundary conditions, which are expressed in terms of wind forcing and surface water temperature. The main parameters have been calibrated using measured profiles of temperature and chlorofluorocarbons (CFC-12) concentration over a 40 year historical period. A long-term simulation (one millennium), in which the current meteorological conditions have been kept statistically unchanged, has been used to determine the asymptotic dynamics. The results are consistent with previous measurements and estimates, suggesting that the model is suitable to qualitatively and quantitatively simulate deep water renewal in deep, temperate lakes, capturing the relative contribution and interaction of the different processes involved.