Daily surface temperature predictions for 185,549 U.S. lakes with associated observations and meteorological conditions (1980-2020)

Daily lake surface temperatures estimates for 185,549 lakes across the contiguous United States from 1980 to 2020 generated using an entity-aware long short-term memory deep learning model. In-situ measurements used for model training and evaluation are from 12,227 lakes and are included as well as daily meteorological conditions and lake properties. Median per-lake estimated error found through cross validation on lakes with in-situ surface temperature observations was 1.24 degrees C. The generated dataset will be beneficial for a wide range of applications including estimations of thermal habitats and the impacts of climate change on inland lakes.