GRACE‐based Mass Conservation as a Validation Target for Basin‐Scale Evapotranspiration in the Contiguous United States

Pascolini‐Campbell, Madeleine; Reager, J. T.; Fisher, Joshua B.

doi:10.1029/2019wr026594

Cited by 36 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Finally, SSEBop and MOD16 brought little improvement to the water budget closure. The poor performances of MOD16 have already been highlighted by e.g., Pascolini-Campbell et al (2020) in the CONUS, Bhattarai et al (2019) in India.…”

Section: Datasets Suitable In Given Regionsmentioning

confidence: 95%

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How well are we able to close the water budget at the global scale?

Lehmann

Vishwakarma

Bamber

2021

Preprint

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Abstract. The water budget equation describes the exchange of water between the land, ocean and atmosphere. Being able to adequately close the water budget gives confidence in our ability to model and/or observe the spatiotemporal variations in the water cycle and its components. Due to advances in observation techniques, satellite sensors, and modelling, a number of data products are available that represent the components of water budget both in space and time. Despite these advances, closure of the water budget at global scale has been elusive. In this study, we attempt to close the global water budget using precipitation, evapotranspiration, and runoff data at the catchment scale. The large number of recent state-of-the-art datasets provides a new evaluation of well-used datasets. These estimates are compared to terrestrial water storage (TWS) changes as measured by the GRACE satellite mission. We investigated 189 river basins covering more than 90 % of the continental land area. TWS changes derived from the water balance equation were compared against GRACE data using two metrics: the Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) and cyclostationary NSE. These were used to assess the performance of more than 1600 combinations of the various datasets considered. We found a positive NSE and cyclostationary NSE in 99 % and 62 % of the basins examined, respectively. This means that TWS changes reconstructed from the water balance equation were more accurate than the long-term (NSE) and monthly (cyclostationary NSE) mean of GRACE time series in the corresponding basins. By analyzing different combinations of the datasets that make up the water balance, we identified data products that performed well in certain regions based on, for example, climatic zone. We identified that some of the good results were obtained due to cancellation of errors in poor estimates of water budget components. Therefore, we used coefficients of variation to determine the relative quality of a data product, which helped us to identify bad combinations giving us good results. In general, water budget components from the ERA5 Land and the Catchment Land Surface Model (CLSM) performed better than other products for most climatic zones. Conversely, the latest version of the Catchment Land Surface Model, v2.2, performed poorly for evapotranspiration in snow-dominated catchments compared, for example, to its predecessor and other datasets available. Thus, the nature of the catchment dynamics and balance between components affects the optimum combination of datasets. For regional studies, the combination of datasets that provides the most realistic TWS for a basin will depend on its climatic conditions and factors that cannot be determined a-priori. We believe, the results of this study provide a roadmap for studying the water budget at the catchment scale.

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Section: Datasets Suitable In Given Regionsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…CC BY 4.0 License. larger inter-annual variability (Liu et al, 2016;Pascolini-Campbell et al, 2020;Swann and Koven, 2017) and larger magnitudes (Bhattarai et al, 2019;Long et al, 2014a;Wan et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

How well are we able to close the water budget at the global scale?

Lehmann

Vishwakarma

Bamber

2021

Preprint

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“…We calculated the change in water storage dS/dt using TWSA and a backward difference method (as in Pascolini-Campbell et al, 2020). For TWSA, we used the most recent GRACE RL06 mass concentration (mascon) solution (available online at: https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/TELLUS_GRAC-GRFO_MAS-CON_CRI_GRID_RL06_V2) (Tapley et al, 2004).…”

Section: Water Balance Etmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Water balance‐based estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) using observations of mass change from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow‐On (GRACE‐FO) satellites have been found to diverge from state‐of‐the‐art land hydrology assimilation model ET (Castle et al., 2016; Pan et al., 2017; Pascolini‐Campbell et al., 2020; Rodell et al., 2011). A study of the Colorado river basin found satellite‐based ET was ∼14% greater than land surface model (LSM)‐based ET when annually averaged over the basin (Castle et al., 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One month prior to the ECOSTRESS launch on May 22, 2018, GRACE‐FO was launched, continuing the multi‐decadal record of GRACE, both of which are able to measure monthly total water storage anomaly (TWSA) changes from both natural and human factors (Rodell et al., 2011). GRACE/GRACE‐FO TWSA can be used to close the water balance, and is effective for calculating ET at the river basin‐scale (Liu et al., 2016; Pascolini‐Campbell et al., 2020; Swann & Koven, 2017). Given the ability of GRACE/GRACE‐FO to detect human activity, and the fine‐scale resolution of ECOSTRESS, leveraging information from both missions can provide new insights on the modulation of ET by human activity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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GRACE‐FO and ECOSTRESS Synergies Constrain Fine‐Scale Impacts on the Water Balance

Pascolini‐Campbell

Fisher

Reager

2021

Geophysical Research Letters

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Using Satellite-Based Terrestrial Water Storage Data: A Review

2023

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Land water storage plays a key role for the Earth’s climate, natural ecosystems, and human activities. Since the launch of the first Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission in 2002, spaceborne observations of changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) have provided a unique, global perspective on natural and human-induced changes in freshwater resources. Even though they have become much used within the broader Earth system science community, space-based TWS datasets still incorporate important and case-specific limitations which may not always be clear to users not familiar with the underlying processing algorithms. Here, we provide an accessible and illustrated overview of the measurement concept, of the main available data products, and of some frequently encountered technical terms and concepts. We summarize concrete recommendations on how to use TWS data in combination with other hydrological or climatological datasets, and guidance on how to avoid possible pitfalls. Finally, we provide an overview of some of the main applications of GRACE TWS data in the fields of hydrology and climate science. This review is written with the intention of supporting future research and facilitating the use of satellite-based terrestrial water storage datasets in interdisciplinary contexts.

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GRACE‐based Mass Conservation as a Validation Target for Basin‐Scale Evapotranspiration in the Contiguous United States

Cited by 36 publications

References 65 publications

How well are we able to close the water budget at the global scale?

How well are we able to close the water budget at the global scale?

GRACE‐FO and ECOSTRESS Synergies Constrain Fine‐Scale Impacts on the Water Balance

Using Satellite-Based Terrestrial Water Storage Data: A Review

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