scholarly journals Study on Water Storage Change and Its Consideration in Water Balance in the Mountain Regions over Arid Northwest China

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Xu

Changes in permafrost and glaciers influence water balance in mountain regions of arid northwest China. Terrestrial water storage change (TWSC) is an important factor in the water cycle. In this study, we used Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites data to retrieve the TWSC in Tien Shan and Qi Lian Mountains. Variation of seasonal TWSC was obvious. However, the seasonal and annual differences reflected the imbalance of water resource distribution in two mountains. The TWSC decreased in the Tien Shan Mountains but increased in the Qi Lian Mountains during 2003 to 2010. Permafrost and glaciers play an important role in the water cycle in arid mountain regions. Demands for water for agriculture need more groundwater extraction for irrigation and glacial melt feeding the rivers which leads to the state of loss of TWSC in Tien Shan Mountains. Increase and thickening of the active layer of permafrost could lead to more infiltration of surface water into the groundwater, which result in increasing water storage and changes in the regional water balance. According to water balance, precipitation and evaporation changed little in short time, and TWSC changed obviously, whereas runoff showed an increasing trend in the Tien Shan Mountains and a decreasing trend in the Qi Lian Mountains.

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Xu ◽  
Shichang Kang ◽  
Qiudong Zhao ◽  
Jiazhen Li

Changes in permafrost influence water balance exchanges in watersheds of cryosphere. Water storage change (WSC) is an important factor in water cycle. We used Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data to retrieve WSC in the Three-River Source Region and subregions. WSC in four types of permafrost (continuous, seasonal, island, and patchy permafrost) was analyzed during 2003–2010. The result showed that WSC had significant change; it increased by9.06±0.01 mm/a (21.89±0.02×109 m3) over the Three-River Source Region during the study period. The most significant changes of WSC were in continuous permafrost zone, with a total amount of about13.94±0.48×109 m3. The spatial distribution of WSC was in state of gain in the continuous permafrost zone, whereas it was in a state of loss in the other permafrost zones. Little changes of precipitation and runoff occurred in study area, but the WSC increased significantly, according to water balance equation, the changes of runoff and water storage were subtracted from changes of precipitation, and the result showed that changes of evaporation is minus which means the evaporation decreased in the Three-River Source Region during 2003–2010.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanshan Deng ◽  
Suxia Liu ◽  
Xingguo Mo

AbstractTerrestrial water storage change (TWSC) plays a crucial role in the hydrological cycle and climate system. To date, methods including 1) the terrestrial water balance method (PER), 2) the combined atmospheric and terrestrial water balance method (AT), and 3) the summation method (SS) have been developed to estimate TWSC, but the accuracy of these methods has not been systematically compared. This paper compares the spatial and temporal differences of the TWSC estimates by the three methods comprehensively with the GRACE data during the 2002–13 period. To avoid the impact of different inputs in the comparison, three advanced reanalysis datasets are used, namely 1) the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)–Department of Energy (DOE) Reanalysis II (NCEP R2), 2) the ECMWF interim reanalysis (ERA-Interim), and 3) the Japanese 55-Year Reanalysis (JRA-55). The results show that all estimates with PER and AT considerably overestimate the long-term mean on a regional scale because the data assimilation in the reanalysis opens the water budget. The difficulty of atmospheric observation and simulation in arid and polar tundra regions is the documented reason for the failure of the AT method to represent the TWSC phase over 30% of the region found in this study. Although the SS result exhibited the best overall agreement with GRACE, the amplitude of TWSC based on SS differed substantially from that of GRACE and the similarity coefficient of the global distribution between the SS-derived estimate and GRACE is still not high. More detailed considerations of groundwater and human activities, for example, irrigation and reservoir impoundments, can help SS to achieve a higher accuracy.


2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiuhong Tang ◽  
Huilin Gao ◽  
Pat Yeh ◽  
Taikan Oki ◽  
Fengge Su ◽  
...  

Abstract Terrestrial water storage (TWS) is a fundamental component of the water cycle. On a regional scale, measurements of terrestrial water storage change (TWSC) are extremely scarce at any time scale. This study investigates the feasibility of estimating monthly-to-seasonal variations of regional TWSC from modeling and a combination of satellite and in situ surface observations based on water balance computations that use ground-based precipitation observations in both cases. The study area is the Klamath and Sacramento River drainage basins in the western United States (total area of about 110 000 km2). The TWSC from the satellite/surface observation–based estimates is compared with model results and land water storage from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data. The results show that long-term evapotranspiration estimates and runoff measurements generally balance with observed precipitation, suggesting that the evapotranspiration estimates have relatively small bias for long averaging times. Observations show that storage change in water management reservoirs is about 12% of the seasonal amplitude of the TWSC cycle, but it can be up to 30% at the subbasin scale. Comparing with predevelopment conditions, the satellite/surface observation–based estimates show larger evapotranspiration and smaller runoff than do modeling estimates, suggesting extensive anthropogenic alteration of TWSC in the study area. Comparison of satellite/surface observation–based and GRACE TWSC shows that the seasonal cycle of terrestrial water storage is substantially underestimated by GRACE.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Reinaldo Rusli ◽  
Albrecht Weerts ◽  
Victor Bense

<p>In this study, we estimate the water balance components of a highly groundwater-dependent and hydrological data-scarce basin of the upper reaches of the Citarum river in West Java, Indonesia. Firstly, we estimate the groundwater abstraction volumes based on population size and a review of literature (0.57mm/day). Estimates of other components like rainfall, actual evaporation, discharge, and total water storage changes are derived from global datasets and are simulated using a distributed hydrological wflow_sbm model which yields additional estimates of discharge, actual evaporation, and total water storage change. We compare each basin water balance estimate as well as quantify the uncertainty of some of the components using the Extended Triple Collocation (ETC) method.</p><p>The ETC application on four different rainfall estimates suggests a preference of using the CHIRPS product as the input to the water balance components estimates as it delivers the highest r<sup>2</sup>  and the lowest RMSE compared to three other sources. From the different data sources and results of the distributed hydrological modeling using CHIRPS as rainfall forcing, we estimate a positive groundwater storage change between 0.12 mm/day - 0.60 mm/day. These results are in agreement with groundwater storage change estimates based upon GRACE gravimetric satellite data, averaged at 0.25 mm/day. The positive groundwater storage change suggests sufficient groundwater recharge occurs compensating for groundwater abstraction. This conclusion seems in agreement with the observation since 2005, although measured in different magnitudes. To validate and narrow the estimated ranges of the basin water storage changes, a devoted groundwater model is necessary to be developed. The result shall also aid in assessing the current and future basin-scale groundwater level changes to support operational water management and policy in the Upper Citarum basin.</p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 533-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Becker ◽  
B. Meyssignac ◽  
L. Xavier ◽  
A. Cazenave ◽  
R. Alkama ◽  
...  

Abstract. Terrestrial water storage (TWS) composed of surface waters, soil moisture, groundwater and snow where appropriate, is a key element of global and continental water cycle. Since 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) space gravimetry mission provides a new tool to measure large-scale TWS variations. However, for the past few decades, direct estimate of TWS variability is accessible from hydrological modeling only. Here we propose a novel approach that combines GRACE-based TWS spatial patterns with multi-decadal-long in situ river level records, to reconstruct past 2-D TWS over a river basin. Results are presented for the Amazon Basin for the period 1980–2008, focusing on the interannual time scale. Results are compared with past TWS estimated by the global hydrological model ISBA-TRIP. Correlations between reconstructed past interannual TWS variability and known climate forcing modes over the region (e.g., El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation) are also estimated. This method offers new perspective for improving our knowledge of past interannual TWS in world river basins where natural climate variability (as opposed to direct anthropogenic forcing) drives TWS variations.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
J. E. Jack Reeves Eyre ◽  
Xubin Zeng

AbstractGlobal and regional water cycle includes precipitation, water vapor divergence, and change of column water vapor in the atmosphere, and land surface evapotranspiration, terrestrial water storage change, and river discharge which is linked to ocean salinity near the river mouth. The water cycle is a crucial component of the Earth system, and numerous studies have addressed its individual components (e.g., precipitation). Here we assess, for the first time, if remote sensing and reanalysis datasets can accurately and self consistently portray the Amazon water cycle. This is further assisted with satellite ocean salinity measurements near the mouth of the Amazon River. The widely-used practice of taking the mean of an ensemble of datasets to represent water cycle components (e.g., precipitation) can produce large biases in water cycle closure. Closure is achieved with only a small subset of data combinations (e.g., ERA5 reanalysis precipitation and evapotranspiration plus GRACE satellite terrestrial water storage), which rules out the lower precipitation and higher evapotranspiration estimates, providing valuable constraints on assessments of precipitation, evapotranspiration and their ratio. The common approach of using the Óbidos stream gauge (located hundreds of kilometres from the river mouth) multiplied by a constant (1.25) to represent the entire Amazon discharge is found to misrepresent the seasonal cycle, and this can affect the apparent influence of Amazon discharge on tropical Atlantic salinity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 3304
Author(s):  
Qin Li ◽  
Xiuguo Liu ◽  
Yulong Zhong ◽  
Mengmeng Wang ◽  
Shuang Zhu

Terrestrial water storage changes (TWSCs) retrieved from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission have been extensively evaluated in previous studies over large basin scales. However, monitoring the TWSC at small basin scales is still poorly understood. This study presented a new method for calculating TWSCs at the small basin scales based on the water balance equation, using hydrometeorological and multi-source data. First, the basin was divided into several sub-basins through the slope runoff simulation algorithm. Secondly, we simulated the evapotranspiration (ET) and outbound runoff of each sub-basin using the PML_V2 and SWAT. Lastly, through the water balance equation, the TWSC of each sub-basin was obtained. Based on the estimated results, we analyzed the temporal and spatial variations in precipitation, ET, outbound runoff, and TWSC in the Ganjiang River Basin (GRB) from 2002 to 2018. The results showed that by comparing with GRACE products, in situ groundwater levels data, and soil moisture storage, the TWSC calculated by this study is in good agreement with these three data. During the study period, the spatial and temporal variations in precipitation and runoff in the GRB were similar, with a minimum in 2011 and maximum in 2016. The annual ET changed gently, while the TWSC fluctuated greatly. The findings of this study could provide some new information for improving the estimate of the TWSC at small basin scales.


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