Global Terrestrial Water Storage Changes and Connections to ENSO Events

Ni, Shengnan; Chen, Jianli; Wilson, Clark R.; Li, Jin; Hu, Xiaogong; Fu, Rong

doi:10.1007/s10712-017-9421-7

Cited by 100 publications

(95 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…On one hand, the climatic fluctuations in ocean and atmosphere, such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), resulting from the large-scale ocean-atmosphere interactions over the equatorial Pacific [24], can strongly affect global water storage by influencing precipitation patterns [25][26][27]. During the warm phase of ENSO (i.e., El Niño), heavy rains generally occur in South America, while droughts occur in Southeast Asia and Australia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human-Induced and Climate-Driven Contributions to Water Storage Variations in the Haihe River Basin, China

et al. 2019

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Terrestrial water storage (TWS) can be influenced by both climate change and anthropogenic activities. While the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites have provided a global view on long-term trends in TWS, our ability to disentangle human impacts from natural climate variability remains limited. Here we present a quantitative method to isolate these two contributions with reconstructed climate-driven TWS anomalies (TWSA) based on long-term precipitation data. Using the Haihe River Basin (HRB) as a case study, we find a higher human-induced water depletion rate (−12.87 ± 1.07 mm/yr) compared to the original negative trend observed by GRACE alone for the period of 2003–2013, accounting for a positive climate-driven TWSA trend (+4.31 ± 0.72 mm/yr). We show that previous approaches (e.g., relying on land surface models) provide lower estimates of the climate-driven trend, and thus likely underestimated the human-induced trend. The isolation method presented in this study will help to interpret observed long-term TWS changes and assess regional anthropogenic impacts on water resources.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human-Induced and Climate-Driven Contributions to Water Storage Variations in the Haihe River Basin, China

et al. 2019

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“…La Niña sees an increase in P and TWS, and a decrease in GMSL [4]. The relationship between TWS and the ENSO mode (usually represented by sea surface temperature) have been studied at basin [10][11][12][13], regional [14], and global scales [7,8,[15][16][17]. The ENSO-P relationship is not necessarily linear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asymmetric Response of Land Storage to ENSO Phase and Duration

Chandanpurkar

Fasullo

Reager

et al. 2019

Water

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Emergence of global mean sea level (GMSL) from a ‘hiatus’ following a persistent La Niña highlights the need to understand the causes of interannual variability in GMSL. Several studies link interannual variability in GMSL to anomalous transport of water mass between land and ocean—and subsequent changes in water storage in these reservoirs—primarily driven by El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Despite this, asymmetries in teleconnections between ENSO mode and land water storage have received less attention. We use historical simulations of natural climate variability to characterize asymmetries in the hydrological response to ENSO based on phase and duration. Findings indicate pronounced phase-specific and duration-specific asymmetries covering up to 93 and 50 million km2 land area, respectively. The asymmetries are seasonally dependent, and based on the mean regional climate are capable of influencing inherently bounded storage by pushing the storage-precipitation relationship towards nonlinearity. The nonlinearities are more pronounced in dry regions in the dry season, wet regions in the wet season, and during Year 2 of persistent ENSO events, limiting the magnitude of associated anomalies under persistent ENSO influence. The findings have implications for a range of stakeholders, including sea level researchers and water managers.

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“…Terrestrial water storage (TWS), a fundamental component of terrestrial hydrological cycles (Tang et al, 2010), represents the total water stored above and below the land surface (Syed et al, 2008). TWS was composed of surface water (SW), including lakes, snow water equivalent, canopy water and glaciers, soil moisture (SM) and groundwater (GW) storage (Cao et al, 2019;Ni et al, 2018). Recent TWS has raised worldwide concerns because of its association with freshwater availability and concerns of the sustainability of global water resources (Creutzfeldt et al, 2012;Meng et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…and global scales in comparison to in situ measurements (Cao et al, 2019;Zhang et al, 2015). With GRACE data, previous literature mostly focus on the TWS changes at the basin or regional scale (Creutzfeldt et al, 2015;Long et al, 2013;Ndehedehe et al, 2017;Ni et al, 2018;Rodell et al, 2009;Shamsudduha et al, 2017;Syed et al, 2008;Yang et al, 2017;Yi et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2015). GRACE data also contributes to the exploration of hydrological storage changes, e.g., glacial mass loss (Brun et al, 2017;Huss et al, 2018;Jacob et al, 2012), lake level and extent changes (Zhang et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2013) and groundwater depletion (Feng et al, 2018;Long et al, 2016;Rodell et al, 2009;Wada et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Widespread Decline in Terrestrial Water Storage and Its Link to Teleconnections across Asia and Eastern Europe

Liu¹,

Feng²,

Ciais³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. Recent global changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) and associated freshwater availability raise major concerns over the sustainability of global water resources. However, our knowledge regarding the long-term trend in TWS and its components is still not well documented. In this work, we characterize the spatiotemporal variations in TWS and its components over the Asian and Eastern European regions during the period of April 2002 to June 2017 using multiple sources of data, including Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite observations, land surface model simulations and precipitation observations. The connections of TWS and global major teleconnections (TCs) are also discussed. The results indicate a widespread decline in TWS during 2002–2017, and five hotspots of TWS negative trends were identified with trends between −8.94 mm yr−1 and −21.79 mm yr−1. TWS partitioning suggests that these negative trends are primarily attributed to the intensive overextraction of groundwater and warm-induced surface water loss, but the contributions of each hydrological component vary among hotspots. The results also indicate that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, Arctic Oscillation and North Atlantic Oscillation are the three largest, dominant factors controlling the variations in TWS through the covariability effect on climate variables. However, seasonal results suggest a divergent response of hydrological components to TCs among seasons and hotspots. Our findings provide insights into changes in TWS and its components over the Asian and Eastern European regions, where there is a growing demand for food grains and water supplies.

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Global Terrestrial Water Storage Changes and Connections to ENSO Events

Cited by 100 publications

References 81 publications

Human-Induced and Climate-Driven Contributions to Water Storage Variations in the Haihe River Basin, China

Human-Induced and Climate-Driven Contributions to Water Storage Variations in the Haihe River Basin, China

Asymmetric Response of Land Storage to ENSO Phase and Duration

Widespread Decline in Terrestrial Water Storage and Its Link to Teleconnections across Asia and Eastern Europe

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