Search Results (7)

Frequent droughts significantly threaten economic development, necessitating effective long-term drought monitoring. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite and its follow-on mission along with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) inversion technologies provide long-term terrestrial water storage signals. However, their limitations in temporal resolution and spatial continuity are inadequate for current requirements. To solve this problem, this study combines a daily terrestrial water storage anomaly (TWSA) reconstruction method with the GNSS inversion technique to explore daily, spatially continuous TWSA in China’s Yellow River Basin (YRB). Furthermore, the Daily Drought Severity Index (DDSI) is employed to analyze drought dynamics in the YRB. Finally, by reconstructing the climate-driven water storage anomalies model, this study explores the influence of climate and human factors on drought. The results indicate the following: (1) The reconstructed daily TWSA product demonstrates superior quality compared to other available products and exhibits a discernible correlation with GNSS-derived daily TWSA data, while REC_TWSA is closer to the GRACE-based TWSA dataset. (2) The DDSI demonstrates superior drought monitoring capabilities compared to conventional drought indices. During the observation period from 2004 to 2021, the DDSI detected the most severe drought event occurring between 30 October 2010 and 10 September 2011. (3) Human activities become the primary driver of drought in the YRB. The high correlation of 0.81 between human-driven water storage anomalies and groundwater storage anomalies suggests that the depletion of TWSA is due to excessive groundwater extraction by humans. This study aims to provide novel evidence and methodologies for understanding drought dynamics and quantifying human factors in the YRB. Full article

As global warming intensifies, the damage caused by drought cannot be disregarded. Traditional drought monitoring is often carried out with monthly resolution, which fails to monitor the sub-monthly climatic event. The GRACE-based drought severity index (DSI) is a drought index based on terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWSA) observed by the gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) satellite. DSI has the ability to monitor drought effectively, and it is in good consistency with other drought monitoring methods. However, the temporal resolution of DSI is limited by that of GRACE observations, so it is necessary to obtain TWSA with a higher temporal resolution to calculate DSI. We use a statistical method to reconstruct the TWSA, which adopts precipitation and temperature to obtain TWSA on a daily resolution. This statistical method needs to be combined with the time series decomposition method, and then the parameters are simulated by the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) procedure. In this study, we use this TWSA reconstruction method to obtain high-quality TWSA at daily time resolution. The correlation coefficient between CSR–TWSA and the reconstructed TWSA is 0.97, the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency is 0.93, and the root mean square error is 16.57. The quality of the reconstructed daily TWSA is evaluated, and the DSI on a daily resolution is calculated to analyze the drought phenomenon in the Pearl River basin (PRB). The results show that the TWSA reconstructed by this method has high consistency with other daily publicly available TWSA products and TWSA provided by the Center for Space Research (CSR), which proves the feasibility of this method. The correlation between DSI based on reconstructed daily TWSA, SPI, and SPEI is greater than 0.65, which is feasible for drought monitoring. From 2003 to 2021, the DSI recorded six drought events in the PRB, and the recorded drought is more consistent with SPI-6 and SPEI-6. There was a drought event from 27 May 2011 to 12 October 2011, and this drought event had the lowest DSI minimum (minimum DSI = −1.76) recorded among the six drought events. The drought monitored by the DSI is in line with government announcements. This study provides a method to analyze drought events at a higher temporal resolution, and this method is also applicable in other areas. Full article

The terrestrial water storage anomaly (TWSA) observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite and its successor GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) provides a new means for monitoring floods. However, due to the coarse temporal resolution of GRACE/GRACE-FO, the understanding of flood occurrence mechanisms and the monitoring of short-term floods are limited. This study utilizes a statistical model to reconstruct daily TWS by combining monthly GRACE observations with daily temperature and precipitation data. The reconstructed daily TWSA is utilized to monitor the catastrophic flood event that occurred in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River basin in 2020. Furthermore, the study compares the reconstructed daily TWSA with the vertical displacements of eight Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations at grid scale. A modified wetness index (MWI) and a normalized daily flood potential index (NDFPI) are introduced and compared with in situ daily streamflow to assess their potential for flood monitoring and early warning. The results show that terrestrial water storage (TWS) in the study area increases from early June, reaching a peak on 19 July, and then receding till September. The reconstructed TWSA better captures the changes in water storage on a daily scale compared to monthly GRACE data. The MWI and NDFPI based on the reconstructed daily TWSA both exceed the 90th percentile 7 days earlier than the in situ streamflow, demonstrating their potential for daily flood monitoring. Collectively, these findings suggest that the reconstructed TWSA can serve as an effective tool for flood monitoring and early warning. Full article

Flood events have caused huge disasters with regard to human life and economic development, especially short-term flood events that have occurred in recent years. Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites can directly detect the spatiotemporal characteristics of terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWSA), which play an important role in capturing flood signals. However, the monthly resolution of GRACE-derived TWSA limits its application in monitoring sub-monthly flood events. Therefore, this paper first reconstructs the daily TWSA based on a statistical model with near real-time precipitation and temperature as input variables, and then three daily flood monitoring indexes are developed based on the reconstructed TWSA. Furthermore, these indexes are employed to evaluate the temporal and spatial characteristics of the 2016 short-term flood event in the Haihe River basin (HRB), including the flood potential index (FPI), water storage deficit index (WSDI), and combined climate deviation index (CCDI). In contrast to previous studies, the temporal resolution of TWSA-based indexes is improved from the monthly scale to the daily scale, which largely improves the temporal characterization of flood monitoring. Results demonstrate that (1) among ten kinds of “Temperature-Precipitation” combinations, the reconstructed TWSA based on CN05.1-CN05.1 match well with the GRACE TWSA, as well as publicly available daily TWSA datasets with a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NSE) of 0.96 and 0.52 ~ 0.81 respectively. (2) The short-term flood characteristics can be better characterized by the reconstructed daily TWSA based on CN05.1-CN05.1, reaching the peak of 216.19 mm on July 20 in the flood center. Additionally, the spatial characteristics of the equivalent water height (EWH) are detected to evolve from southwest to northeast during the short-term flood. (3) FPI, WSDI, and CCDI are proven to be effective in monitoring flood events in the HRB, which validates the reliability of the reconstructed daily TWSA. Moreover, compared to the 56% and 66% coverage of damage quantified by FPI and CCDI, the 45% damage coverage of the flood mapped by WSDI is more consistent with the governmental reports within the HRB. This paper is expected to provide a valuable reference for the assessment of short-term events caused by extreme climate change. Full article

This study proposes a new mathematical approach to downscale monthly terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWSA) from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and estimates groundwater storage anomalies (GWSA) at a daily temporal resolution and a spatial resolution of 0.25° × 0.25°, simultaneously. The method combines monthly 3° GRACE gravity models and daily 0.25° hydrological model outputs and their uncertainties in the spectral domain by minimizing the mean-square error (MSE) of their estimator to enhance the quality of both low and high frequency signals in the estimated TWSA and GWSA. The Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) was the hydrological model considered in this study. The estimator was tested over Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba (Canada), especially over the Province of Alberta, using data from 65 in-situ piezometric wells for 2003. Daily minimum and maximum GWS varied from 14 mm to 32 mm across the study area. A comparison of the estimated GWSA with the corresponding in-situ wells showed significant and consistent correlations in most cases, with r = 0.43–0.92 (mean r = 0.73). Correlations were >0.70 for approximately 70% of the wells, with root mean square errors <24 mm. These results provide evidence for using the proposed spectral combination estimator in downscaling GRACE data on a daily basis at a spatial scale of 0.25° × 0.25°. Full article

As the largest groundwater drainage region in China, the per capita water resources in the North China Plain (NCP) account for only one-seventh of the country’s available water resources. Currently, the NCP is experiencing a serious water shortage due to the overexploitation of groundwater resources and a subsequent series of natural disasters. Thus, accurate regional assessments and effective water resource management policies are of critical importance. To accomplish this phenomenon, the daily terrestrial water storage anomaly (TWSA) over the NCP is calculated from the combination of the GNSS vertical deformation sequences (seasonal items) and GRACE (trend items). The groundwater storage anomaly (GWSA) in the NCP is obtained by subtracting the canopy water, soil water, and snow water equivalent components from the TWSA. The inversion results of this study are verified by comparisons with the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) data products. The elevated annual amplitude areas are located in Beijing and Tianjin, and the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC), root mean square error (RMSE), and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) between the two GWSA results are 0.67, 4.01 cm, and 0.61, respectively. This indicates that the methods proposed in this study are reliable. Finally, the groundwater drought index was calculated for the period from 2011 to 2021, and the results showed that 2019 was the driest year, with a drought severity index value of −0.12, indicative of slightly moderate drought conditions. By calculating and analyzing the annual GWSA, this work shows that the South–North Water Transfer Project does provide some regional drought mitigation. Full article

High spatiotemporal resolution of terrestrial total water storage plays a key role in assessing trends and availability of water resources. This study presents a two-step method for downscaling GRACE-derived total water storage anomaly (GRACE TWSA) from its original coarse spatiotemporal resolution (monthly, 3-degree spherical cap/~300 km) to a high resolution (daily, 5 km) through combining land surface model (LSM) simulated high spatiotemporal resolution terrestrial water storage anomaly (LSM TWSA). In the first step, an iterative adjustment method based on the self-calibration variance-component model (SCVCM) is used to spatially downscale the monthly GRACE TWSA to the high spatial resolution of the LSM TWSA. In the second step, the spatially downscaled monthly GRACE TWSA is further downscaled to the daily temporal resolution. By applying the method to downscale the coarse resolution GRACE TWSA from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) mascon solution with the daily high spatial resolution (5 km) LSM TWSA from the Ecological Assimilation of Land and Climate Observations (EALCO) model, we evaluated the benefit and effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method is capable to downscale GRACE TWSA spatiotemporally with reduced uncertainty. The downscaled GRACE TWSA are also evaluated through in-situ groundwater monitoring well observations and the results show a certain level agreement between the estimated and observed trends. Full article