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Link to original content: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24563556
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. 2013 Jun;49(6):3314-3329.
doi: 10.1002/wrcr.20264. Epub 2013 Jun 10.

Characteristic mega-basin water storage behavior using GRACE

J T Reager  1 , James S Famiglietti  1
Affiliations
Free PMC article

Characteristic mega-basin water storage behavior using GRACE

J T Reager et al. Water Resour Res. 2013 Jun.
Free PMC article

Abstract

[1] A long-standing challenge for hydrologists has been a lack of observational data on global-scale basin hydrological behavior. With observations from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, hydrologists are now able to study terrestrial water storage for large river basins (>200,000 km2), with monthly time resolution. Here we provide results of a time series model of basin-averaged GRACE terrestrial water storage anomaly and Global Precipitation Climatology Project precipitation for the world's largest basins. We address the short (10 year) length of the GRACE record by adopting a parametric spectral method to calculate frequency-domain transfer functions of storage response to precipitation forcing and then generalize these transfer functions based on large-scale basin characteristics, such as percent forest cover and basin temperature. Among the parameters tested, results show that temperature, soil water-holding capacity, and percent forest cover are important controls on relative storage variability, while basin area and mean terrain slope are less important. The derived empirical relationships were accurate (0.54 ≤ Ef ≤ 0.84) in modeling global-scale water storage anomaly time series for the study basins using only precipitation, average basin temperature, and two land-surface variables, offering the potential for synthesis of basin storage time series beyond the GRACE observational period. Such an approach could be applied toward gap filling between current and future GRACE missions and for predicting basin storage given predictions of future precipitation.

Keywords: GRACE; global hydrology; model; remote sensing; storage.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Map of study basins. (1) Amazon, (2) Congo, (3) Ganges and Brahmaputra, (4) Mekong, (5) Murray, (6) Niger, (7) Nile, (8) Orinoco, (9) Parana, (10) Zambezi, (11) Amur, (12) Danube, (13) Dnieper, (14) Don, (15) Lena, (16) Mackenzie, (17) Mississippi, (18) Ob, (19) Volga, (20) Yangtze, and (21) Yenesei.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Basin-mean time series of storage anomaly from GRACE (blue) and cumulative precipitation anomaly from GPCP (green).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Time series correlation coefficients between cumulative precipitation and storage anomaly: (top) at 1° resolution globally and (bottom) for selected study basins as a function of basin temperature.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Maps of tested parameter variables: (top) global percent forest cover from MODIS, (middle) global plant-available soil WHC (in centimeters) from Dunne and Wilmott [15], and (bottom) global terrain slope (tangent of slope) from Hydro1k. All are estimated at 1° resolution.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Basin-averaged spectra for storage anomaly for GRACE (blue) and cumulative precipitation anomaly from GPCP (green). The dashed line is the spectra for a white-noise time series with twice the standard deviation of the observations.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Theoretical transfer function example, showing the propagation of variance from precipitation to storage in a specific frequency range.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Basin-mean transfer function admittance for precipitation input to storage output for four basins, plotted as a function of frequency (cycles/yr).
Figure 8
Figure 8
Basin-mean storage response to precipitation forcing (transfer function admittance) as a function of percent forest cover. Shown for the annual and low-frequency timescales. The best fit model function is also plotted.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Storage response to precipitation (transfer function admittance) as a function of basin-mean soil WHC. Shown for the annual and low-period timescales. Best fit model is also plotted.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Annual period transfer function admittance as a function of (top) basin drainage area and (bottom) basin-mean terrain slope.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Basin-modeled storage anomaly time series for warm basins (red) and 95% confidence (gray shaded), based on cumulative precipitation anomaly (blue), compared with observed storage anomaly from GRACE (black dashed). Storage is in centimeters equivalent of water over the basin.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Basin-modeled storage anomaly time series for cold basins (red) and 95% confidence (gray shaded), based on cumulative precipitation anomaly (blue), compared with observed storage anomaly from GRACE (black dashed). Storage is in centimeters equivalent of water over the basin.
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