On the ability to study regional hydrometeorological changes using GPS and GRACE measurements

Abstract Recently, an ongoing rise in temperature for both land and ocean areas is recorded resulting from the Earth’s warming climate. As a result, droughts we observe are getting more frequent, longer and more severe, exerting sustained impacts on humans, ecosystems leading to famine, poverty, mass migration, or agricultural and economic losses. The changes in climate are successfully monitored by analyzing Total Water Storage (TWS). For years, TWS has been successfully determined using geodetic techniques, such as gravity field variations observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) missions or station position changes monitored by the Global Positioning System (GPS). As well, geodetic-derived data can be applied successfully to study of hydrometeorological events. To quantify droughts characteristics at different temporal and spatial scales, we recalculate the vertical displacements to Drought Severity Indices (DSI). We find that DSI based on GPS and GRACE are positively correlated at over 80% of stations around the world, highlighting both Americas and Europe as the most correlated areas. To validate results, we compare DSI based on GPS/GRACE with the Global Land Water Storage (GLWS) hydrological model, the traditional climate indices, and temperature anomalies. We show that GPS-DSIs are strongly temporally consistent with both the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Soil Moisture Index (SMI) climate indices at 85% of stations, indicating weakly correlated areas at mid-latitudes. We further show a high potential of geodetic data to assess drought characteristics within climate zones as well as global studies. We note that moderate conditions dominate for all climate zones, for which dry moderate conditions are observed for 40% of the months analyzed. As a result, we note warning conditions at least 52% of global stations with extreme drying DSI trends above a value of 2–3 per year. We note that the global water changes are dominated by 9 month droughts at over 72% of stations, indicating the average drought duration around 12, 14, and 15 months for GPS-, GRACE-, and GLWS-DSI, respectively. The obtained results from geodetic measurements more reliably characterize the type and phase of drought, as well as how these droughts cascade into freshwater, enabling appropriate mitigation strategies.