Have GRACE satellites overestimated groundwater depletion in the Northwest India Aquifer?

Long, Di; Chen, Xi; Scanlon, Bridget R.; Wada, Yoshihide; Hong, Yang; Singh, Vijay P.; Chen, Yaning; Wang, Cunguang; Han, Zhuo Rachel; Yang, Wenting

doi:10.1038/srep24398

Cited by 228 publications

(128 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Therefore, when surface water storage change (in soil and snow) is known, the groundwater can be obtained after subtracting the GLDAS surface total water storage from the total water storage change derived by GRACE (Jin & Feng, ; M. Rodell, Velicogna, & Famiglietti, ). Previous studies found a good agreement between GRACE‐estimated and in situ‐observed groundwater variations (Feng et al, ; Chen et al, ; Xiao et al, ; Long et al, ). The equation can be expressed as

italicΔ W = italicΔ italicGW + italicΔ italicSM + italicΔ italicSWE,

…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 53%

Understanding changes in the water budget driven by climate change in cryospheric‐dominated watershed of the northeast Tibetan Plateau, China

Kang

Wang

et al. 2019

Hydrological Processes

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Glacial retreat and the thawing of permafrost due to climate warming have altered the hydrological cycle in cryospheric‐dominated watersheds. In this study, we analysed the impacts of climate change on the water budget for the upstream of the Shule River Basin on the northeast Tibetan Plateau. The results showed that temperature and precipitation increased significantly during 1957–2010 in the study area. The hydrological cycle in the study area has intensified and accelerated under recent climate change. The average increasing rate of discharge in the upstream of the Shule River Basin was 7.9 × 106 m3/year during 1957–2010. As the mean annual glacier mass balance lost −62.4 mm/year, the impact of glacier discharge on river flow has increased, especially after the 2000s. The contribution of glacier melt to discharge was approximately 187.99 × 108 m3 or 33.4% of the total discharge over the study period. The results suggested that the impact of warming overcome the effect of precipitation increase on run‐off increase during the study period. The evapotranspiration (ET) increased during 1957–2010 with a rate of 13.4 mm/10 years. On the basis of water balance and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and the Global Land Data Assimilation System data, the total water storage change showed a decreasing trend, whereas groundwater increased dramatically after 2006. As permafrost has degraded under climate warming, surface water can infiltrate deep into the ground, thus changing both the watershed storage and the mechanisms of discharge generation. Both the change in terrestrial water storage and changes in groundwater have had a strong control on surface discharge in the upstream of the Shule River Basin. Future trends in run‐off are forecasted based on climate scenarios. It is suggested that the impact of warming will overcome the effect of precipitation increase on run‐off in the study area. Further studies such as this will improve understanding of water balance in cold high‐elevation regions.

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italicΔ W = italicΔ italicGW + italicΔ italicSM + italicΔ italicSWE,

…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 53%

Understanding changes in the water budget driven by climate change in cryospheric‐dominated watershed of the northeast Tibetan Plateau, China

Kang

Wang

et al. 2019

Hydrological Processes

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“…Intercomparison of different products has been recently carried out by Farinotti et al () and shows the large potential of these new datasets to work at scales closer to the groundwater management scale (scales ∼ 100,000 km 2 ). For details on GRACE TWS processing to extract GWS contribution, associated uncertainties linked to GRACE large‐scale sensitivity (truncation, filtering, and leakage), and estimation of storage compartments (Equation ), the interested reader can refer to Longuevergne et al (), Scanlon et al (), and Long et al ().…”

Section: Detection Of Groundwater Depletionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing Groundwater Depletion and Dynamics Using GRACE and InSAR: Potential and Limitations

Castellazzi¹,

et al. 2016

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In the last decade, remote sensing of the temporal variation of ground level and gravity has improved our understanding of groundwater dynamics and storage. Mass changes are measured by GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites, whereas ground deformation is measured by processing synthetic aperture radar satellites data using the InSAR (Interferometry of Synthetic Aperture Radar) techniques. Both methods are complementary and offer different sensitivities to aquifer system processes. GRACE is sensitive to mass changes over large spatial scales (more than 100,000 km 2 ). As such, it fails in providing groundwater storage change estimates at local or regional scales relevant to most aquifer systems, and at which most groundwater management schemes are applied. However, InSAR measures ground displacement due to aquifer response to fluid-pressure changes. InSAR applications to groundwater depletion assessments are limited to aquifer systems susceptible to measurable deformation. Furthermore, the inversion of InSAR-derived displacement maps into volume of depleted groundwater storage (both reversible and largely irreversible) is confounded by vertical and horizontal variability of sediment compressibility. During the last decade, both techniques have shown increasing interest in the scientific community to complement available in situ observations where they are insufficient. In this review, we present the theoretical and conceptual bases of each method, and present idealized scenarios to highlight the potential benefits and challenges of combining these techniques to remotely assess groundwater storage changes and other aspects of the dynamics of aquifer systems.

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“…This may result in the inaccurate GWS and the associated error estimate as the uncertainties in observation and of the land surface model outputs are neglected in the combination (or regression) of two noisy data (e.g. Long et al, 2016). In data assimilation, the GRACE uncertainty is often derived empirically, not necessarily reflecting the actual GRACE error characteristics (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the use of the GRACE normal equation of inter-satellite tracking data for estimation of soil moisture and groundwater in Australia

Tangdamrongsub

Han

Decker

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. An accurate estimation of soil moisture and groundwater is essential for monitoring the availability of water supply in domestic and agricultural sectors. In order to improve the water storage estimates, previous studies assimilated terrestrial water storage variation ( TWS) derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) into land surface models (LSMs). However, the GRACE-derived TWS was generally computed from the high-level products (e.g. time-variable gravity fields, i.e. level 2, and land grid from the level 3 product). The gridded data products are subjected to several drawbacks such as signal attenuation and/or distortion caused by a posteriori filters and a lack of error covariance information. The postprocessing of GRACE data might lead to the undesired alteration of the signal and its statistical property. This study uses the GRACE least-squares normal equation data to exploit the GRACE information rigorously and negate these limitations. Our approach combines GRACE's least-squares normal equation (obtained from ITSG-Grace2016 product) with the results from the Community Atmosphere Biosphere Land Exchange (CABLE) model to improve soil moisture and groundwater estimates. This study demonstrates, for the first time, an importance of using the GRACE raw data. The GRACE-combined (GC) approach is developed for optimal least-squares combination and the approach is applied to estimate the soil moisture and groundwater over 10 Australian river basins. The results are validated against the satellite soil moisture observation and the in situ groundwater data. Comparing to CABLE, we demonstrate the GC approach delivers evident improvement of water storage estimates, consistently from all basins, yielding better agreement on seasonal and inter-annual timescales. Significant improvement is found in groundwater storage while marginal improvement is observed in surface soil moisture estimates.

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Have GRACE satellites overestimated groundwater depletion in the Northwest India Aquifer?

Cited by 228 publications

References 43 publications

Understanding changes in the water budget driven by climate change in cryospheric‐dominated watershed of the northeast Tibetan Plateau, China

Understanding changes in the water budget driven by climate change in cryospheric‐dominated watershed of the northeast Tibetan Plateau, China

Assessing Groundwater Depletion and Dynamics Using GRACE and InSAR: Potential and Limitations

On the use of the GRACE normal equation of inter-satellite tracking data for estimation of soil moisture and groundwater in Australia

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