Using Large Lakes As Analogues for Oceanographic Studies

300Since large, deep lakes are characterized by almost the entire spectrum of motions typical of the ocean (except for planetary Rossby waves, tides, and the permanent, deep thermocline), one can use the advantages of the relatively small size (and therefore ease of access) of these water basins to perform observational experiments covering practically the entire lake, i.e., a lake can serve as an imitation model for the ocean in the following ways: (1) revealing the factors of the formation of the water's general circulation using autonomous buoy station observations and remote sensing techniques; (2) testing the reliability of hydrodynamical models developed to model the oceanic circulation; (3) studies of the internal wave mechanism for the generation, nonlinear interactions, and determination of the effects of fronts on internal wave transformations; (4) analysis (with the lake gyre motions as an example) of the ocean synoptic gyres' kinematics; (5) studies of local effects of lakes on synoptic atmospheric formations; (6) methodological work on the substantiation and application of remote sensing techniques to study the parameters characterizing the dynamics and thermal regime of lakes and oceans.