Seasonal water storage change of the Yangtze River basin detected by GRACE

1 Introduction Large-scale mass redistribution, or temporal varia- tion of mass within the Earth system, the driving force of interactions between solid Earth and geophysical fluids envelope (i.e., atmosphere, ocean, and hydro- sphere), is an important geophysical process critical to human life. Most of the interactions between solid Earth and the atmosphere/oceans happen at seasonal and inter-annual time scales. One important contribu- tor of mass redistribution at seasonal and inter-annual …     

Detection of Continental Hydrology and Glaciology Signals from GRACE: A Review

Since its launch in March 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has provided a global mapping of the time-variations of the Earth’s gravity field. Tiny variations of gravity from monthly to decadal time scales are mainly due to redistributions of water mass inside the surface fluid envelops of our planet (i.e., atmosphere, ocean and water storage on continents). In this article, we present a review of the major contributions of GRACE satellite gravimetry in global and regional hydrology. To date, many studies have focused on the ability of GRACE to detect, for the very first time, the time-variations of continental water storage (including surface waters, soil moisture, groundwater, as well as snow pack at high latitudes) at the unprecedented resolution of ~400–500 km. As no global complete network of surface hydrological observations exists, the advances of satellite gravimetry to monitor terrestrial water storage are significant and unique for determining changes in total water storage and water balance closure at regional and continental scales.     

Retrieval of Large-Scale Hydrological Signals in Africa from GRACE Time-Variable Gravity Fields

Since its launch in April 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission is recording the Earth’s time-variable gravity field with temporal and spatial resolutions of typically 7–30?days and a few hundreds of kilometers, allowing the monitoring of continental water storage variations from both continental and river-basin scales. We investigate here large scale hydrological variations in Africa using different GRACE spherical harmonic solutions, using different processing strategies (constrained and unconstrained solutions). We compare our GRACE estimates to different global hydrology models, with different land-surface schemes and also precipitation forcing. We validate GRACE observations through two different techniques: first by studying desert areas, providing an estimate of the precision. Then we compare GRACE recovered mass variations of main lakes to volume changes derived from radar altimetry measurements. We also study the differences between different publicly available precipitation datasets from both space measurements and ground rain gauges, and their impact on soil-moisture estimates.     

Modeling the water resources of the Black and Mediterranean Sea river basins and their impact on regional mass changes

For the first time, a dedicated release of the hydrology and water use model WaterGAP3, has been developed to spatially explicit calculate hydrological fluxes within river basins draining into the Mediterranean and Black Sea. The main differences between the new regional version of the global WaterGAP3 model and the previously applied global version WaterGAP2 can be found in the spatial resolution, snow modeling, and water use modeling. Comparison with observations shows that WaterGAP3 features a more realistic representation of modeled river runoff and inflow into both seas. WaterGAP3 generates more inflow to both seas than WaterGAP2. In the WaterGAP3 simulation, contributions to the total runoff into the Black Sea from individual discharge regions show in general a good agreement to climatology derived runoff, but lesser importance of Georgian rivers for the basin's water. After the successful model validation WaterGAP3 has been applied to correct estimates of seawater mass derived from the GRACE gravity mission and to account for freshwater inflow into both basins. The performance of the WaterGAP3 regional solution has been evaluated by comparing the seawater mass derived from GRACE corrected for the leakage of continental hydrology, to an independent estimate derived from steric-corrected satellite altimetry with steric correction from regional oceanographic models. The agreement is higher in the Mediterranean Sea than in the Black Sea. Results using WaterGAP3 and WaterGAP2 are not significantly different. However the agreement with the altimetry-derived results is higher using WaterGAP2, due to the smaller annual amplitude of the continental hydrology leakage from WaterGAP3. We conclude that the regional model WaterGAP3 is capable of realistically quantifying water mass variation in the region, further developments have been identified.     

Global Terrestrial Water Storage Changes and Connections to ENSO Events

Improved data quality of extended record of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite gravity solutions enables better understanding of terrestrial water storage (TWS) variations. Connections of TWS and climate change are critical to investigate regional and global water cycles. In this study, we provide a comprehensive analysis of global connections between interannual TWS changes and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, using multiple sources of data, including GRACE measurements, land surface model (LSM) predictions and precipitation observations. We use cross-correlation and coherence spectrum analysis to examine global connections between interannual TWS changes and the Niño 3.4 index, and select four river basins (Amazon, Orinoco, Colorado, and Lena) for more detailed analysis. The results indicate that interannual TWS changes are strongly correlated with ENSO over much of the globe, with maximum cross-correlation coefficients up to ~0.70, well above the 95% significance level (~0.29) derived by the Monte Carlo experiments. The strongest correlations are found in tropical and subtropical regions, especially in the Amazon, Orinoco, and La Plata basins. While both GRACE and LSM TWS estimates show reasonably good correlations with ENSO and generally consistent spatial correlation patterns, notably higher correlations are found between GRACE TWS and ENSO. The existence of significant correlations in middle–high latitudes shows the large-scale impact of ENSO on the global water cycle.     

Quantifying temporal variations in water resources of a vulnerable middle eastern transboundary aquifer system

Freshwater resources in the arid Arabian Peninsula, especially transboundary aquifers shared by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq, are of critical environmental and geopolitical significance. Monthly Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite‐derived gravity field solutions acquired over the expansive Saq transboundary aquifer system were analysed and spatiotemporally correlated with relevant land surface model outputs, remote sensing observations, and field data to quantify temporal variations in regional water resources and to identify the controlling factors affecting these resources. Our results show substantial GRACE‐derived terrestrial water storage (TWS) and groundwater storage (GWS) depletion rates of ?9.05 ± 0.25 mm/year (?4.84 ± 0.13 km³/year) and ?6.52 ± 0.29 mm/year (?3.49 ± 0.15 km³/year), respectively. The rapid decline is attributed to both climatic and anthropogenic factors; observed TWS depletion is partially related to a decline in regional rainfall, while GWS depletions are highly correlated with increasing groundwater extraction for irrigation and observed water level declines in regional supply wells.     

GRACE估算陆地水储量季节和年际变化

利用最新公布的GRACE GFZ RL04数据,分析了2003年1月～2007年12月全球27条流域和陆地水储量的季节性和年际变化.结果表明,相近流域季节性变化相位接近.2003年1月～2007年12月陆地水储量季节性变化为1572.4 km3,其中变化最大流域为亚马逊河,其次分别为鄂毕河、尼罗河和尼日尔河等流域.5年来 GRACE陆地水储量的年际变化为-75.4±40.3 km3/a,其中亚马逊河、勒拿河和马更些河等流域的年际变化呈现正增长,而刚果河、密西西比河、恒河、育空河和雅鲁藏布江等流域则相反.GRACE与GLDAS数据均表明2006年后陆地水储量年际变化存在明显增加.     

Integration of GRACE mass variations into a global hydrological model

Time-variable gravity data of the GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) satellite mission provide global information on temporal variations of continental water storage. In this study, we incorporate GRACE data for the first time directly into the tuning process of a global hydrological model to improve simulations of the continental water cycle. For the WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM), we adopt a multi-objective calibration framework to constrain model predictions by both measured river discharge and water storage variations from GRACE and illustrate it on the example of three large river basins: Amazon, Mississippi and Congo. The approach leads to improved simulation results with regard to both objectives. In case of monthly total water storage variations we obtained a RMSE reduction of about 25 mm for the Amazon, 6 mm for the Mississippi and 1 mm for the Congo river basin. The results highlight the valuable nature of GRACE data when merged into large-scale hydrological modeling. Furthermore, they reveal the utility of the multi-objective calibration framework for the integration of remote sensing data into hydrological models.     

近四年全球海水质量变化及其时空特征分析

本文利用卫星重力、卫星测高和海洋温盐数据反演计算全球海水质量变化,并分析其时空变化特征.卫星重力数据利用2003年1月~2006年12月的GRACE月时变重力场球谐系数,同时考虑替换一阶项和C₂₀项,并进行了相关误差滤波、高斯滤波和陆地水文信号泄漏改正,计算得到海洋等效水高变化;利用相同时间跨度的卫星测高数据和海洋温度、盐度水文观测数据,计算全球海平面变化和比容海平面变化,反演得到海水质量变化.反演的两种海水质量变化的年际变化特征一致性较好.三种数据得到的长期趋势变化,与1993~2003年的结果相比,可以看出,海水质量变化加速,并已成为全球海平面上升的主要因素.     

Comparison of Daily GRACE Gravity Field and Numerical Water Storage Models for De-aliasing of Satellite Gravimetry Observations

Reducing aliasing effects of insufficiently modelled high-frequent, non-tidal mass variations of the atmosphere, the oceans and the hydrosphere in gravity field models derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission is the topic of this study. The signal content of the daily GRACE gravity field model series (ITG-Kalman) is compared to high-frequency bottom pressure variability and terrestrially stored water variations obtained from recent numerical simulations from an ocean circulation model (OMCT) and two hydrological models (WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model, Land Surface Discharge Model). Our results show that daily estimates of ocean bottom pressure from the most recent OMCT simulations and the daily ITG-Kalman solutions are able to explain up to 40 % of extra-tropical sea-level variability in the Southern Ocean. In contrast to this, the daily ITG-Kalman series and simulated continental total water storage variability largely disagree at periods below 30 days. Therefore, as long as no adequate hydrological model will become available, the daily ITG-Kalman series can be regarded as a good initial proxy for high-frequency mass variations at a global scale. As a second result of this study, based on monthly solutions as well as daily observation residuals, it is shown that applying this GRACE-derived de-aliasing model supports the determination of the time-variable gravity field from GRACE data and the subsequent geophysical interpretation. This leads us to the recommendation that future satellite concepts for determining mass variations in the Earth system should be capable of observing higher frequeny signals with sufficient spatial resolution.     

利用径向基函数RBF解算GRACE全球时变重力场

本文利用GRACE(Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment)level 1b数据和径向基函数RBF(radial basis function)方法解算了全球时变地球重力场.RBF基函数相比传统球谐(spherical harmonic)基函数,其高度的空域局部特性使得正则化过程易于添加先验协方差信息,从而可能揭示更加准确的重力场信号.本文研究表明,RBF基函数算法在精化现有的GRACE全球时变重力场模型,如提升部分区域信号幅度等方面具有一定优势.本文通过将RBF的尺度因子作为待解参数,基于GRACE卫星的Level 1b数据和变分方程法,成功获取了2009-2010年90阶无约束全球时变重力场RBF模型Hust-IGG03,以及正则化全球时变重力场RBF模型Hust-IGG04.通过与GRACE官方数据处理中心GFZ发布的最新90阶球谐基时变模型RL05a进行对比,结果表明:(1)无约束RBF模型Hust-IGG03和GFZ RL05a在空域和频域表现基本一致;(2)正则化RBF模型Hust-IGG04无需进行后处理滤波已经显示较高信噪比,噪音水平接近于球谐基模型GFZ RL05a经400 km高斯滤波后的效果;(3)HustIGG04相比400 km高斯滤波GFZ RL05a在周年振幅图和趋势图上显示出更多的细节信息,并且呈现出更强的信号幅度,如在格陵兰冰川融化趋势估计上Hust-IGG04比GFZ RL05a提高了24.2%.以上结果均显示RBF方法有助于进一步挖掘GRACE观测值所包含的时变重力场信息.     

Seasonal Water Storage Variations as Impacted by Water Abstractions: Comparing the Output of a Global Hydrological Model with GRACE and GPS Observations

Better quantification of continental water storage variations is expected to improve our understanding of water flows, including evapotranspiration, runoff and river discharge as well as human water abstractions. For the first time, total water storage (TWS) on the land area of the globe as computed by the global water model WaterGAP (Water Global Assessment and Prognosis) was compared to both gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) and global positioning system (GPS) observations. The GRACE satellites sense the effect of TWS on the dynamic gravity field of the Earth. GPS reference points are displaced due to crustal deformation caused by time-varying TWS. Unfortunately, the worldwide coverage of the GPS tracking network is irregular, while GRACE provides global coverage albeit with low spatial resolution. Detrended TWS time series were analyzed by determining scaling factors for mean annual amplitude (f _GRACE) and time series of monthly TWS (f _GPS). Both GRACE and GPS indicate that WaterGAP underestimates seasonal variations of TWS on most of the land area of the globe. In addition, seasonal maximum TWS occurs 1 month earlier according to WaterGAP than according to GRACE on most land areas. While WaterGAP TWS is sensitive to the applied climate input data, none of the two data sets result in a clearly better fit to the observations. Due to the low number of GPS sites, GPS observations are less useful for validating global hydrological models than GRACE observations, but they serve to support the validity of GRACE TWS as observational target for hydrological modeling. For unknown reasons, WaterGAP appears to fit better to GPS than to GRACE. Both GPS and GRACE data, however, are rather uncertain due to a number of reasons, in particular in dry regions. It is not possible to benefit from either GPS or GRACE observations to monitor and quantify human water abstractions if only detrended (seasonal) TWS variations are considered. Regarding GRACE, this is mainly caused by the attenuation of the TWS differences between water abstraction variants due to the filtering required for GRACE TWS. Regarding GPS, station density is too low. Only if water abstractions lead to long-term changes in TWS by depletion or restoration of water storage in groundwater or large surface water bodies, GRACE may be used to support the quantification of human water abstractions.     

Use of data of satellite system for gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) for studying and assessment of hydrological-geohydrological characteristics of large river basins

Analysis is given of a relatively new method for studying the distribution and dynamics of land water resources, which is based on measuring the anomalies of Earth gravity field with the use of GRACE satellite system. The international satellite experiment on determining the gravity and climate changes has been carried out since 2002 with the aim of making high-frequency (within the frequency range of 10900?C36000 GHz) measurements of time variations in Earth??s gravity field. The measurement method and the procedure of data processing and evaluating the hydrological-geohydrological characteristics of large river basins and regions based on GRACE data.     

Improvement of Global Hydrological Models Using GRACE Data

After about 6 years of GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite mission operation, an unprecedented global data set on the spatio-temporal variations of the Earth’s water storage is available. The data allow for a better understanding of the water cycle at the global scale and for large river basins. This review summarizes the experiences that have been made when comparing GRACE data with simulation results of global hydrological models and it points out the prerequisites and perspectives for model improvements by combination with GRACE data. When evaluated qualitatively at the global scale, water storage variations on the continents from GRACE agreed reasonably well with model predictions in terms of their general seasonal dynamics and continental-scale spatial patterns. Differences in amplitudes and phases of water storage dynamics revealed in more detailed analyses were mainly attributed to deficiencies in the meteorological model forcing data, to missing water storage compartments in the model, but also to limitations and errors of the GRACE data. Studies that transformed previously identified model deficiencies into adequate modifications of the model structure or parameters are still rare. Prerequisites for a comprehensive improvement of large-scale hydrological models are in particular the consistency of GRACE observation and model variables in terms of filtering, reliable error estimates, and a full assessment of the water balance. Using improvements in GRACE processing techniques, complementary observation data, multi-model evaluations and advanced methods of multi-objective calibration and data assimilation, considerable progress in large-scale hydrological modelling by integration of GRACE data can be expected.     

Regional gravity variations in Europe from superconducting gravimeters

Recent satellite missions (CHAMP, GRACE) are now returning data on the time variation of the gravity field with harmonic coefficients computed every 4 weeks. The promise is to achieve a sub-microgal accuracy that will define continental mass variations involving large-scale hydrology. With this in mind, we examine the time varying gravity field over central Europe using a limited number of high quality ground-based superconducting gravimeter stations within the Global Geodynamics Project (GGP). Our purpose is to see whether there are coherent signals between the individual stations and to compare the regional component with that predicted from models of continental hydrology. The results are encouraging. We have found, using empirical orthogonal eigenfunctions of the gravity data that a clear annual signal is present that is consistent in phase (low amplitudes in summer) and amplitude (1–3 microgal) with that determined from a large-scale model of land water in connection with global climate modeling. More work is required to define how the gravity field is related to large-scale soil moisture and other mass variations, and we have yet to compare our results to the latest satellite-derived data.     

Significance of secular trends of mass variations determined from GRACE solutions

Since 2002 the Earth’s gravity field is globally observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission. The GRACE monthly gravity field solutions, available from several analysis centres, reflect mass variations in the atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere. Due to correlated noise contained in these solutions, it is, however, first necessary to apply an appropriate filtering technique. The resulting, smoothed time series are applied not only to determine variations with different periodic signatures (e.g., seasonal, short and medium-term), but to derive long-periodic mass variations and secular trends as well. As the GRACE monthly solutions always show the integral effect of all mass variations, for separation of single processes, like the GIA (Glacial isostatic adjustment)-related mass increase in Fennoscandia, appropriate reduction models (e.g. from hydrology) are necessary.In this study we show for the example of the Fennoscandian uplift area that GRACE solutions from different analysis centres yield considerably different secular trends. Furthermore, it turns out that the inevitable filtering of the monthly gravity field models affects not only the amplitudes of the signals, but also their spatial resolution and distribution such as the spatial form of the detected signals. It also becomes evident that the determination of trends has to be performed together with the determination of periodic components. All periodic terms which are really contained in the data, and only such, have to be included. The restricted time span of the available GRACE measurements, however, limits the separation of long-periodic and secular signals. It is shown that varying the analysis time span affects the results considerably. Finally, a reduction of hydrological signals from the detected integral secular trends using global hydrological models (WGHM, LaDWorld, GLDAS) is attempted. The differences among the trends resulting from different models illustrate that the state-of-the-art hydrology models are not suitable for this purpose as yet. Consequently, taking the GRACE monthly gravity field solutions from one centre, choosing a single filter and applying an insufficiently reliable reduction model leads sometimes to a misinterpretation of considered geophysical processes. Therefore, one has to be cautious with the final interpretation of the results.     

Improved daily GRACE gravity field solutions using a Kalman smoother

Different GRACE data analysis centers provide temporal variations of the Earth's gravity field as monthly, 10-daily or weekly solutions. These temporal mean fields cannot model the variations occurring during the respective time span. The aim of our approach is to extract as much temporal information as possible out of the given GRACE data. Therefore the temporal resolution shall be increased with the goal to derive daily snapshots. Yet, such an increase in temporal resolution is accompanied by a loss of redundancy and therefore in a reduced accuracy if the daily solutions are calculated individually. The approach presented here therefore introduces spatial and temporal correlations of the expected gravity field signal derived from geophysical models in addition to the daily observations, thus effectively constraining the spatial and temporal evolution of the GRACE solution. The GRACE data processing is then performed within the framework of a Kalman filter and smoother estimation procedure.The approach is at first investigated in a closed-loop simulation scenario and then applied to the original GRACE observations (level-1B data) to calculate daily solutions as part of the gravity field model ITG-Grace2010. Finally, the daily models are compared to vertical GPS station displacements and ocean bottom pressure observations.From these comparisons it can be concluded that particular in higher latitudes the daily solutions contain high-frequent temporal gravity field information and represent an improvement to existing geophysical models.     

Tackling mass redistribution phenomena by time-dependent GRACE- and terrestrial gravity observations

Time variable gravity field models derived from the satellite mission GRACE have been demonstrated to be consistent with water mass variations in the global hydrological cycle. Independent observations are provided by terrestrial measurements. In order to achieve a maximum of reliability and information gain, ground-based gravity observations may be deployed for comparison with the gravity field variations derived from the GRACE satellite mission. In this context, the data of the network of superconducting gravimeters (SG) of the ‘Global Geodynamics Project’ (GGP) are of particular interest. This study is focused on the dense SG network in Central Europe with its long-term gravity observations. It is shown that after the separation and reduction of local hydrological effects in the SG observations especially for subsurface stations, the time-variable gravity signals from GRACE agree well with the terrestrial observations from the SG station cluster.Station stability of the SG sites with respect to vertical deformations was checked by GNSS based observations. Most of the variability can be explained by loading effects due to changes in continental water storage, and, in general, the stability of all stations has been confirmed.From comparisons based on correlation and coherence analyses in combination with the root mean square (RMS) variability of the time series emerges, that the maximum correspondence between the SG and GRACE time series is achieved when filtering the GRACE data with Gaussian filters of about 1000 km filter length, which is in accordance with previous publications.Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOF) analysis was applied to the gravity time series in order to identify common characteristic spatial and temporal patterns. The high correspondence of the first modes for GRACE and SG data implies that the first EOF mode represents a large-scale (Central European) time-variable gravity signal seen by both the GRACE satellites and the SG cluster.     

Multivariate Prediction of Total Water Storage Changes Over West Africa from Multi-Satellite Data

West African countries have been exposed to changes in rainfall patterns over the last decades, including a significant negative trend. This causes adverse effects on water resources of the region, for instance, reduced freshwater availability. Assessing and predicting large-scale total water storage (TWS) variations are necessary for West Africa, due to its environmental, social, and economical impacts. Hydrological models, however, may perform poorly over West Africa due to data scarcity. This study describes a new statistical, data-driven approach for predicting West African TWS changes from (past) gravity data obtained from the gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE), and (concurrent) rainfall data from the tropical rainfall measuring mission (TRMM) and sea surface temperature (SST) data over the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. The proposed method, therefore, capitalizes on the availability of remotely sensed observations for predicting monthly TWS, a quantity which is hard to observe in the field but important for measuring regional energy balance, as well as for agricultural, and water resource management. Major teleconnections within these data sets were identified using independent component analysis and linked via low-degree autoregressive models to build a predictive framework. After a learning phase of 72 months, our approach predicted TWS from rainfall and SST data alone that fitted to the observed GRACE-TWS better than that from a global hydrological model. Our results indicated a fit of 79 % and 67 % for the first-year prediction of the two dominant annual and inter-annual modes of TWS variations. This fit reduces to 62 % and 57 % for the second year of projection. The proposed approach, therefore, represents strong potential to predict the TWS over West Africa up to 2 years. It also has the potential to bridge the present GRACE data gaps of 1 month about each 162 days as well as a—hopefully—limited gap between GRACE and the GRACE follow-on mission over West Africa. The method presented could also be used to generate a near-real-time GRACE forecast over the regions that exhibit strong teleconnections.     

Quantifying Modern Recharge and Depletion Rates of the Nubian Aquifer in Egypt

Egypt is currently seeking additional freshwater resources to support national reclamation projects based mainly on the Nubian aquifer groundwater resources. In this study, temporal (April 2002 to June 2016) Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)-derived terrestrial water storage (TWS_GRACE) along with other relevant datasets was used to monitor and quantify modern recharge and depletion rates of the Nubian aquifer in Egypt (NAE) and investigate the interaction of the NAE with artificial lakes. Results indicate: (1) the NAE is receiving a total recharge of 20.27 ± 1.95 km³ during 4/2002?2/2006 and 4/2008–6/2016 periods, (2) recharge events occur only under excessive precipitation conditions over the Nubian recharge domains and/or under a significant rise in Lake Nasser levels, (3) the NAE is witnessing a groundwater depletion of ? 13.45 ± 0.82 km³/year during 3/2006–3/2008 period, (4) the observed groundwater depletion is largely related to exceptional drought conditions and/or normal baseflow recession, and (5) a conjunctive surface water and groundwater management plan needs to be adapted to develop sustainable water resources management in the NAE. Findings demonstrate the use of global monthly TWS_GRACE solutions as a practical, informative, and cost-effective approach for monitoring aquifer systems across the globe.