Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry

Drought is a complex phenomenon leading to a wide range of socio-economic, environmental, and political problems. The storage-based drought which represents the persistent lack of water in different levels of the Total Water Storage (TWS) from deep groundwater to surface water plays a vital role in...

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Main Author: Saemian, Peyman
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Universität Stuttgart 2021
Subjects:
620
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.18419/opus-11734
http://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/handle/11682/11751
id ftdatacite:10.18419/opus-11734
record_format openpolar
spelling ftdatacite:10.18419/opus-11734 2023-05-15T17:09:42+02:00 Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry Saemian, Peyman 2021 https://dx.doi.org/10.18419/opus-11734 http://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/handle/11682/11751 en eng Universität Stuttgart info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess 620 Collection article masterThesis 2021 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.18419/opus-11734 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z Drought is a complex phenomenon leading to a wide range of socio-economic, environmental, and political problems. The storage-based drought which represents the persistent lack of water in different levels of the Total Water Storage (TWS) from deep groundwater to surface water plays a vital role in proactive drought management. Despite its necessity, TWS could not be monitored due to the lack of consistent measurements from regional to continental scale. Since its launch in 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (grace) mission and its successor GRACE Follow-On have provided unique observations of the TWS change at the global scale. In this study, we have investigated characterizing the storage-based drought at the global scale using GRACE measurements. To this end, the Equivalent Water Height (EWH) has been retrieved from GRACE level 02 solutions. We have addressed the short record of GRACE observations in capturing the full hydroclimate variations. Based on our analysis, regions with a considerable direct human intervention like overexploitation of groundwater in the Middle East, regions that were affected by climate change like ice-melting over the Mackenzie river basin in Canada, or extreme precipitation events over the Ob river basin in the boreal regions are more sensitive to the length of ewh time series. Due to the crucial need for a long (at least 30 years) record of EWH, we have extended GRACE observations back to 1980 using an ensemble of models. The extended dataset has been developed using a pixel-wise selection of best-performed models among global hydrological models, land surface models, and atmospheric reanalysis models. The extended dataset has been used in the study for drought characterization over the grac period. The proposed Storage-based Drought Index (SDI) successfully captured the documented drought events globally in terms of intensity and spatio-temporal distribution. Moreover, the analysis of SDI over the five classes of drought from D0 as abnormally dry to D4 as exceptional drought showed that most regions have suffered at least once from the storage-based drought over the GRACE period (2002–2016). Besides, the map of exceptional drought frequency highlights regions with significant groundwater extraction like California, the Middle East, and north of India and regions with exceptional shifts in the precipitation and temperature pattern and intensity like Amazon in South America and China. Finally, our comparison of SDI with three most widely used drought indices namely the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) reveals that despite their high correlation over climate-driven regions, these indices failed to characterize anthropogenic drought events, especially over regions with considerable groundwater withdraws. The study allows for a more informative storage-based drought with a more robust climatology as the reference, thus enabling a more realistic risk assessment. Article in Journal/Newspaper Mackenzie river ob river DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Canada Mackenzie River
institution Open Polar
collection DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology)
op_collection_id ftdatacite
language English
topic 620
spellingShingle 620
Saemian, Peyman
Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry
topic_facet 620
description Drought is a complex phenomenon leading to a wide range of socio-economic, environmental, and political problems. The storage-based drought which represents the persistent lack of water in different levels of the Total Water Storage (TWS) from deep groundwater to surface water plays a vital role in proactive drought management. Despite its necessity, TWS could not be monitored due to the lack of consistent measurements from regional to continental scale. Since its launch in 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (grace) mission and its successor GRACE Follow-On have provided unique observations of the TWS change at the global scale. In this study, we have investigated characterizing the storage-based drought at the global scale using GRACE measurements. To this end, the Equivalent Water Height (EWH) has been retrieved from GRACE level 02 solutions. We have addressed the short record of GRACE observations in capturing the full hydroclimate variations. Based on our analysis, regions with a considerable direct human intervention like overexploitation of groundwater in the Middle East, regions that were affected by climate change like ice-melting over the Mackenzie river basin in Canada, or extreme precipitation events over the Ob river basin in the boreal regions are more sensitive to the length of ewh time series. Due to the crucial need for a long (at least 30 years) record of EWH, we have extended GRACE observations back to 1980 using an ensemble of models. The extended dataset has been developed using a pixel-wise selection of best-performed models among global hydrological models, land surface models, and atmospheric reanalysis models. The extended dataset has been used in the study for drought characterization over the grac period. The proposed Storage-based Drought Index (SDI) successfully captured the documented drought events globally in terms of intensity and spatio-temporal distribution. Moreover, the analysis of SDI over the five classes of drought from D0 as abnormally dry to D4 as exceptional drought showed that most regions have suffered at least once from the storage-based drought over the GRACE period (2002–2016). Besides, the map of exceptional drought frequency highlights regions with significant groundwater extraction like California, the Middle East, and north of India and regions with exceptional shifts in the precipitation and temperature pattern and intensity like Amazon in South America and China. Finally, our comparison of SDI with three most widely used drought indices namely the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) reveals that despite their high correlation over climate-driven regions, these indices failed to characterize anthropogenic drought events, especially over regions with considerable groundwater withdraws. The study allows for a more informative storage-based drought with a more robust climatology as the reference, thus enabling a more realistic risk assessment.
format Article in Journal/Newspaper
author Saemian, Peyman
author_facet Saemian, Peyman
author_sort Saemian, Peyman
title Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry
title_short Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry
title_full Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry
title_fullStr Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry
title_full_unstemmed Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry
title_sort characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry
publisher Universität Stuttgart
publishDate 2021
url https://dx.doi.org/10.18419/opus-11734
http://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/handle/11682/11751
geographic Canada
Mackenzie River
geographic_facet Canada
Mackenzie River
genre Mackenzie river
ob river
genre_facet Mackenzie river
ob river
op_rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
op_doi https://doi.org/10.18419/opus-11734
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