Abstract
China is the largest agricultural country with the largest population and booming socio-economy, and hence, remarkably increasing water demand. In this sense, it is practically critical to obtain knowledge about spatiotemporal variations of the territorial water storage (TWS) and relevant driving factors. In this study, we attempted to investigate TWS changes in both space and time using the monthly GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) data during 2003–2015. Impacts of four climate indices on TWS were explored, and these four climate indices are, respectively, El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO). In addition, we also considered the impacts of precipitation changes on TWS. We found significant correlations between climatic variations and TWS changes across China. Meanwhile, the impacts of climate indices on TWS changes were shifting from one region to another across China with different time lags ranging from 0 to 12 months. ENSO, IOD and PDO exerted significant impacts on TWS over 80% of the regions across China, while NAO affected TWS changes over around 40% of the regions across China. Moreover, we also detected significant relations between TWS and precipitation changes within 9 out of the 10 largest river basins across China. These results highlight the management of TWS across China in a changing environment and also provide a theoretical ground for TWS management in other regions of the globe.
Highlights
The warming climate, and its impacts on the hydrological cycle at regional and global scales, has aroused remarkable human concerns in recent decades [1,2,3]
We observed relatively high terrestrial water storage (TWS) during 2004–2005 when compared to the TWS for the whole period considered in this study
The results demonstrated that the influence of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on TWS variations is different from the influence of Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) on TWS
Summary
The warming climate, and its impacts on the hydrological cycle at regional and global scales, has aroused remarkable human concerns in recent decades [1,2,3]. The warming climate drives higher risks of floods and droughts, and evidence from model simulation results documents that the dry regions of the world will be drier, while the wet regions will become wetter [13,14]. This phenomenon was known as the rich-get-richer mechanism [15,16]. As one of the major water resources for human activities, such as agricultural irrigation, the storage of groundwater is decreasing globally under climate warming [17,18,19,20]. We attempted to use GRACE data to analyze terrestrial water storage (TWS) across China
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