Abstract
AbstractThe GRACE‐FO satellites launched in May 2018 are able to quantify the water mass deficit in Central Europe during the two consecutive summer droughts of 2018 and 2019. Relative to the long‐term climatology, the water mass deficits were −112 ± 10.5 Gt in 2018 and −145 ± 12 Gt in 2019. These deficits are 73% and 94% of the mean amplitude of seasonal water storage variations, which is so severe that a recovery cannot be expected within 1 year. The water deficits in 2018 and 2019 are the largest in the whole GRACE and GRACE‐FO time span. Globally, the data do not show an offset between the two missions, which proves the successful continuation of GRACE by GRACE‐FO and thus the reliability of the observed extreme events in Central Europe. This allows for a joint assessment of the four Central European droughts in 2003, 2015, 2018, and 2019 in terms of total water storage deficits.
Highlights
Satellite gravimetry is the only remote sensing technique available today that provides quantitative estimates of water storage changes at regional to global scales, independent of whether these are exposed at the Earth's surface or occurring in the deep subsurface
The data do not show an offset between the two missions, which proves the successful continuation of GRACE by GRACE‐FO and the reliability of the observed extreme events in Central Europe
In this work we investigate the capability of GRACE‐FO to identify and quantify the water mass deficit of the two exceptionally dry summers 2018 and 2019 in Central Europe
Summary
Satellite gravimetry is the only remote sensing technique available today that provides quantitative estimates of water storage changes at regional to global scales, independent of whether these are exposed at the Earth's surface or occurring in the deep subsurface. The recent conditions should be set into the context of earlier drought events in the area such as the European heat wave of 2003 (Andersen et al, 2005; Seitz et al, 2008), which was exceptionally hot and dry all over Central Europe leading to widespread water scarcity at that time (Laaha et al, 2017). In this work we investigate the capability of GRACE‐FO to identify and quantify the water mass deficit of the two exceptionally dry summers 2018 and 2019 in Central Europe We classify these events in the context of 18 years of GRACE and GRACE‐FO observations and discuss the reliability of the newly available GRACE‐FO estimates. Besides total water storage anomalies estimated over the whole region of Central Europe, satellite gravimetry provides some information on the spatial distribution of the water deficits, here given for each drought year at the month of seasonal minimum in TWS (Figure 2). The spatiotemporal evolution of the droughts in 2015 and 2018 cannot be fully tracked due to several missing GRACE/GRACE‐FO monthly solutions in those years
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