Abstract
In this study, we used in situ measurements for the first time to analyze the applicability and effectiveness of evaluating groundwater storage (GWS) changes across China using Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite products and hydrological data derived from the WaterGap Global Hydrological Model (WGHM), Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) and eartH2Observe (E2O). The results show that the GWS derived from GRACE JPL Mascons products combined with GLDAS Noah V2.1 data most accurately reflect the overall distribution of GWS changes in China and the correlation coefficient between the in situ measurements reaches 0.538. The empirical orthogonal function decomposition for GWS indicates clear interannual variation and seasonal variation in China. The trends of China’s GWS changes showed a clear regional characteristic from 2003 to 2016. The GWS in the northeast, central-south, and western junction of Xinjiang-Qinghai-Tibet had increased significantly, and the North China Plain (NCP) had a severe decline. The correlation coefficient between the annual trends of precipitation and GWS was 0.57, and it reached 0.73 when four provinces (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanxi, Hebei) that are wholly or partially located in the NCP were excluded. The seasonal variability of GWS in China was obvious and the volatilities in Jiangxi, Hunan and Fujian provinces were the highest, reaching 6.39 cm, 6.33 cm and 5.20 cm, respectively. The empirical orthogonal function decomposition for GWS and precipitation over China indicated seasonal consistency with a correlation coefficient of 0.76. The awareness of areas with significant depletion and large seasonal fluctuation of GWS help adaptations to manage local GWS situation.
Highlights
Excessive consumption of groundwater storage (GWS) can have a serious impact on human society
Since there are 30 combinations of derived GWS from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) combined with Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) and E2O, here, we only present the two best results, i.e., JPLMS combined with GLDAS Noah V2.1 and JPLMS combined with E2O according to the comparison with the in situ measurements that follow
The results show that the annual trends of GWS derived from GRACE JPLMS combined with E2O (Figure 1b) and GRACE JPLMS combined with GLDAS Noah V2.1 (Figure 1c) shows similar spatial patterns—an increasing trend in southern China and a significant decrease in the North China Plain (NCP)
Summary
Excessive consumption of groundwater storage (GWS) can have a serious impact on human society. Current methods about groundwater derivation mainly relay on in situ measurements, hydrological models data and remote sensing-based image [6]. The hydrological model includes Land Surface models (LSMs) and hydrological water balance models (HMs) [6]. HMs are developed for global water resources assessments and human water uses are considered. The typical products include WaterGAP Global Hydrological Model (WGHM) [13], WBM [14], PCR-GLOBWB [15]. As HMs need detailed hydraulic parameters, water level observations, human water uses, land use data, etc. As for remote sensing data, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission provides technology for assessing global terrestrial water storage (TWS). Together with other hydrological data, GRACE has a potential power to obtain the GWS change by removing other water storage components like soil moisture, surface water, etc. GFZ releases GRACE Spherical Harmonics products, and CSR and JPL release both GRACE Spherical Harmonics and Mascons data [22,23,24]
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