Abstract
The mapping and forecasting of droughts and floods is an important potential field of application of global soil moisture and water storage products from satellites and models. Especially when extremes in near-surface soil moisture propagate into extremes in total water storage, agricultural production and water supply can be severely impacted. This study relates soil moisture from the WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM) and the satellite sensors Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer—Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) and Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) to total water storage variations from the satellite gravity mission GRACE. A particular focus is on destructive hydrological extreme events, as listed in the International Disaster Database EM-DAT. Data sets are analyzed via correlation, time shift, and principal component analyses. The study area is the La Plata Basin in South America. The results indicate that most of the soil moisture anomalies are linked to periods of El Niño and La Niña and associated natural disasters. For the La Plata drought of 2008/2009 and the El Niño flooding of 2009/2010, soil moisture serves as an indicator for the later deficit or surplus in total water storage. These hydrological anomalies were strongest in the southern, central, and eastern parts of the basin, but more than one hundred thousand people were also affected in the northwestern part.
Highlights
Mapping and understanding soil moisture dynamics under extreme hydrologic conditions is important for agricultural production, disaster management, and water supply [1]
To harmonize the units and approximate the root zone soil moisture for all data sets, we scaled Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer—Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) data with respect to the soil moisture content provided by WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model (WGHM)
We investigated how total water storage from GRACE and soil moisture from two remote sensing satellites sensors (ASCAT and AMSR-E) and one hydrological model (WGHM) map extreme weather events in the La Plata Basin of South America
Summary
Mapping and understanding soil moisture dynamics under extreme hydrologic conditions is important for agricultural production, disaster management, and water supply [1]. Recent satellite sensors providing information on global surface soil moisture include the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer—Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) onboard the NASA mission AQUA (2002–2011), the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT). Various studies have analyzed how well the soil moisture products of these sensors map hydrological extremes. The relationship between soil moisture and runoff [8] and the use of satellite soil moisture data for runoff modelling [9,10] has been investigated. The growing need for further research on the use of large-scale soil moisture data, for drought monitoring and socioeconomic modelling and forecasting (e.g., addressing issues of drought impact and food security; [11]), has been recently emphasized in a review on the state of the art in large-scale soil moisture monitoring [12]
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