Great Lakes Modelled Lake Surface Temperature for the period of 1941 to 2023

This Dataset contains daily surface temperature data over all Great Lakes for the period of 1941 to 2023. The dataset domain includes all five Laurentian Great Lakes (Superior, Michigan-Huron, Erie, and Ontario) as well as Lake St. Clair over an unstructured grid with an average horizontal resolution of approximately 4.75 km. Lake surface temperature (LST) data generated using the Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM, version 4.4.2). The FVCOM model incorporates ice dynamics through a coupled ice model based on the Los Alamos Sea Ice Model (CICE), to ensure realistic representation of ice cover processes. Meteorological forcing for the model was provided by the ERA5 reanalysis product, which offers hourly atmospheric data at approximately 31 km horizontal resolution for the region. For further details on the model setup, validation results, and limitations, readers are referred to the (Abdelhady et. al. (In revision)).

Two files are provided. The netCDF file "GreatLakesSurfaceTemperature1940_2023.nc" contains the surface temperature data for all the grid cells from 1941 to 2023. This file also contain the latitude and longitude for each grid cell, and datatime for each time step. The other file "UnstructuredGridTriangles.csv" contains the triangles for the unstructured grid that can be used to plot the data. 

Abdelhady, H., Fujisaki-Manome, A., Cannon, D., Gronewold, A., and Wang, J. (In revision). Climate Change-Induced Amplification of Extreme Temperatures in Large Lakes. Communications Earth & Environment