remotesensing-logo

Journal Browser

Journal Browser

New Challenges in Satellite Gravimetry for Hydrology

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Remote Sensing in Geology, Geomorphology and Hydrology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2022) | Viewed by 2186

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Géosciences Environnement Toulouse, UMR 5563, CNRS/IRD/UPS, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, 14 Avenue Edouard Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
Interests: marine geophysics; oceanography; hydrology and surface water storage; fresh water flux; height system; geoid; gravity; bathymetry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
UPS, Géoscience Environnement Toulouse (GET) UMR 5563, 14 Avenue Edouard Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
Interests: geodesy; gravimetry; geophysics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Since the beginning of this millennium, a new generation of Low-Earth-Orbiter (LEO) satellite missions, including the pioneer GRACE mission, has provided information on redistributions of mass inside the fluid envelopes of the Earth. GRACE, and its successor GRACE-FO launched in 2018, have enabled diagnostics by establishing research fields related to relevant mass balances of major watersheds, sea level, and melting ice or glaciers, as well as revealing slow groundwater droughts during the last decade. The high accuracy of the inter-satellite K-band Range system measurements coupled with information from the on-board 3-axis accelerometers provides tiny changes to the gravity field caused by water mass variations in the different compartments of the water cycle. Improvement of the space and time resolutions represents the next step for detecting localized and faster water mass transfers occurring at smaller scales.

We invite contributions in satellite gravimetry presenting original approaches and analyses from global to regional scales of hydrology in response to climate evolution, as well as related topics based on the combination of different independent satellite or surface data.

Dr. Guillaume Ramillien
Dr. Lucia Seoane
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • satellite gravimetry
  • GRACE(-FO)
  • climate change
  • continental hydrology
  • cryosphere

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

26 pages, 5893 KiB  
Article
Sensitivity to Mass Changes of Lakes, Subsurface Hydrology and Glaciers of the Quantum Technology Gravity Gradients and Time Observations of Satellite MOCAST+
by Tommaso Pivetta, Carla Braitenberg and Alberto Pastorutti
Remote Sens. 2022, 14(17), 4278; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14174278 - 30 Aug 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1259
Abstract
The quantum technology absolute gravimeters, gradiometers, and clocks are at the forefront of the instrumentation to be exploited in a future gravity mission (the QSG mission concept). Apart from the quantum payload, the mission design defines the choice of the number of satellites [...] Read more.
The quantum technology absolute gravimeters, gradiometers, and clocks are at the forefront of the instrumentation to be exploited in a future gravity mission (the QSG mission concept). Apart from the quantum payload, the mission design defines the choice of the number of satellites and the satellite orbit constellation, with the goal of optimizing the observation of the earth’s gravity field and reducing aliasing phenomena. Our goal is to define the realistic gravity field changes generated by glaciers and lakes and define the sensitivity of the quantum gravity mission for the detection of hydrologic and cryospheric mass changes. The analysis focuses on mass changes in the high mountains of Asia and the South American continent. The mass changes are based on terrestrial and satellite observations and are of a climatic origin. We show that compared to the existing GRACE-FO mission, a quantum gravity mission significantly improves the detection of the climatic mass gain of lakes and mass loss of glaciers, allowing for smaller mass features to be distinguished, and smaller mass losses to be detected. The greater signal is the seasonal signal with a yearly period, which would be detected at the 10 Gt level for areas > 8000 km2. The yearly mass loss of the Patagonian glaciers can be detected at the 5 Gt/yr level, an improvement from the 10 Gt/yr detectable by GRACE-FO. Spatial resolution would also be improved, with an increase of about 50% in spatial frequency for the detection of the mass change rate of lakes and glaciers in Tibet. The improved spatial resolution enables an improved localization of the lakes and glaciers affected by climatic mass change. The results will contribute to defining the user requirements of the future QSG missions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Challenges in Satellite Gravimetry for Hydrology)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

Back to TopTop