lake level change
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High Mountain Asia (HMA) host one of the largest concentrations of lakes globally, which together with snow and ice reserves, serve as an essential water resource for the region. Due to the limited human disturbances these high-altitude lakes serve as sensitive indicators of climate change impacts. However, their vast number, remote location, and challenging mountainous terrain make in-situ measurements scarce. Satellite altimetry offers a unique opportunity to continuously monitor lake water level variation across HMA. Here we present a water level timeseries for 238 lakes (≥ 20 km2) across HMA derived from CryoSat-2 (2010-2023) and ICESat-2 (2018-2024). Water level timeseries from the two independent altimetry missions shows strong consistency with 80% of lakes exhibiting statistically significant agreement in their signals (p = 0.013). The dataset is structured as a single netCDF file with a two-dimensional matrix format, including water level measurements, associated uncertainties, mission identifiers, ice flags, and static lake attributions (location, area). The water level datasets presented enables long-term trend analysis, changes in lake water storage, response to wet-and-dry climate cycles. The dataset also provides essential variables to study relationships between lake ecosystems and changes in the water resources across HMA.
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