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  • Review Article
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Extreme and compound events in lakes

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages 593–611 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Extreme and compound events disrupt lake ecosystems worldwide, with their frequency, intensity and duration increasing in response to climate change. In this Review we outline evidence of the occurrence, drivers and impact of extreme and compound events in lakes. Univariate extremes, which include lake heatwaves, droughts and floods, underwater dimming episodes and hypoxia, can occur concurrently, sequentially or simultaneously at different locations to form multivariate, temporal or spatial compound events, respectively. The probability of extreme and compound events is increasing owing to climate warming, declining lake water levels in half of lakes globally, and basin-scale anthropogenic stressors, such as nutrient pollution. Most in-lake extreme events are inherently compound in nature owing to tightly coupled physical, chemical and biological underlying processes. The cascading effects of compound events propagate or dissipate through lakes. For example, a heatwave might trigger stratification and oxygen depletion, subsequently leading to fish mortality or the proliferation of harmful algal blooms. Interactions between extremes are increasingly observed and can trigger feedback loops that exacerbate harmful algal blooms and fishery declines, leading to severe ecological and socio-economic consequences. Managing the increasing risk of compound events requires integrated models, coordinated monitoring and proactive adaptation strategies tailored to the vulnerabilities of lake ecosystems.

Key points

  • Lake heatwaves have increased in average intensity, average duration and total duration globally, at rates of 0.15 ± 0.3 °C per decade, 2.1 ± 3.1 days per decade and 8.8 ± 7.6 days per decade, respectively, since the 1980s.

  • The probability of lake heatwave events is three times more likely in a 1.5 °C warming scenario and 25 times more likely in a 3.5 °C scenario compared with pre-industrial conditions.

  • Half of the world’s largest lakes experienced declines in water storage between 1992 and 2020, accompanied by corresponding reductions in surface extent.

  • Extreme events in lakes can cause considerable impacts, including the onset of hypoxia, harmful algal blooms, disruption of food webs and loss of ecosystem services.

  • Basin-scale anthropogenic stressors, such as nutrient enrichment, land-use change and water withdrawal, interact with climate extremes to increase the frequency, intensity and ecological consequences of in-lake extremes.

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Fig. 1: Drivers, types and impacts of univariate and compound extremes in lakes.
Fig. 2: Intensification of lake heatwaves over recent decades.
Fig. 3: Contrasting lake water levels and hydrological pressures.
Fig. 4: Drivers of underwater dimming episodes in lakes.
Fig. 5: Dissolved oxygen responses to extreme weather events in lakes.
Fig. 6: Interactions and impacts of extreme and compound events in lakes.
Fig. 7: Strategies to enhance lake recovery, resilience and long-term sustainability.

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Data availability

Code and data used in this manuscript are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.15771655 (ref. 231).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the following for financial support: R.I.W. thanks the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Independent Research Fellowship (no. NE/T011246/1); R.I.W. and A.F. thank the Royal Society International Science Partnerships Fund International Collaboration Award (no. ICAO/R1/241102); Y.Z. thanks the National Key Research and Development Program of China (no. 2022YFC3204100) and the PIFI Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (nos. 2024PG0017 and 2024DC0005); S.F.J. thanks the University of Notre Dame (Society of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship); H.S. thanks NERC (no. NE/X019071/1, UK EO Climate Information Service); W.W. thanks NERC (no. NE/X013537/1); G.A.W. thanks the Swedish Research Council (VR grant no. 2020-03222 and FORMAS grant no. 2020-01091); E. Jeppesen thanks the Yunnan Provincial Council of Academicians and Experts Workstations (no. 202405AF140006); J.Z. thanks the Helmholtz Initiative and Networking Fund (Young Investigator Group COMPOUNDX, grant agreement VH-NG-1537); and Y.T. thanks the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (Grade C) of the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant no. GZC20240637). The authors also thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 42425102 and U22A20561).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, UK

    R. Iestyn Woolway, Haoran Shi & Weijia Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Lake and Watershed Science for Water Security, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China

    Yunlin Zhang, Boqiang Qin, Kun Shi & Ze Ren

  3. Centre for Environmental and Freshwater Studies, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Dundalk, Ireland

    Eleanor Jennings

  4. Kinneret Limnological Laboratory, Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, Migdal, Israel

    Tamar Zohary

  5. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, USA

    Stephen F. Jane

  6. Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Joachim Jansen

  7. Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Gesa A. Weyhenmeyer

  8. State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Di Long

  9. Key Laboratory of Hydrosphere Sciences of the Ministry of Water Resources, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Di Long

  10. Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá, Tefé, Brazil

    Ayan Fleischmann

  11. State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Lian Feng

  12. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Yan Tong

  13. State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Environment and Resources (TPESER), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Guoqing Zhang

  14. Department of Compound Environmental Risks, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research — UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Jakob Zscheischler

  15. Department of Hydro Sciences, TUD Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany

    Jakob Zscheischler

  16. Department of Ecoscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Erik Jeppesen

  17. Sino-Danish Centre for Education and Research, Beijing, China

    Erik Jeppesen

  18. Limnology Laboratory, Department of Biological Sciences and Centre for Ecosystem Research and Implementation, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

    Erik Jeppesen

  19. Institute for Ecological Research and Pollution Control of Plateau Lakes, School of Ecology and Environmental Science, Yunnan University, Kunming, China

    Erik Jeppesen

Authors
  1. R. Iestyn Woolway
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  2. Yunlin Zhang
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  3. Eleanor Jennings
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  4. Tamar Zohary
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  5. Stephen F. Jane
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Contributions

R.I.W. and Y.Z. conceived the idea for the Review and led the organization and writing of the paper. E. Jennings, J.J., L.F., Y.T. and S.F.J. contributed to the writing, creating figures and data analysis. E. Jennings, T.Z., S.F.J., J.J., E. Jeppesen and J.Z. led the writing of individual sections of the paper. G.A.W., A.F., D.L., L.F., B.Q., K.S., H.S., W.W., Y.T., G.Z. and Z.R. contributed to writing and literature review. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to R. Iestyn Woolway or Yunlin Zhang.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks William Pringle, Jasmine Saros and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Woolway, R.I., Zhang, Y., Jennings, E. et al. Extreme and compound events in lakes. Nat Rev Earth Environ 6, 593–611 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00710-w

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