Abstract
The availability of hydrologic data is an important step for hydrological modeling and water resource management in the world. Unfortunately, the in situ observations with the right characteristics are very sparse globally, particularly in Africa. Understanding the climate variability of Africa and its prominent role as the heat engine of the global climate system is one of the key goals in climate research. Also, studies show that the time varying of terrestrial water storage contributes significantly to regional climate. In this paper, we have analyzed terrestrial water storage variations from GRACE satellite mission and from GLDAS model over the whole Africa for the period of August 2002 till April 2012. Amplitudes of water storage and rainfall data over some large river basins in Africa have been studied at seasonal and interannual scales. Comparison with the GLDAS model outputs is performed and discussed. Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) estimates from GRACE and GLDAS show comparable patterns, however GRACE is better to detect interannual variation in water storage. Comparing TWS with rainfall data shows a phase lag of around one month between the maximum of the rainfall over a region and the maximum of TWS over the same region.
Highlights
Monitoring, understanding, and quantifying water cycle budget is of great importance in both continental and regional scales, especially in light of current global climate change
In this work we used Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) RL04 spherical harmonics coefficients provided by the Centre of Space Research (CSR) of the University of Texas at Austin up to degree and order 60 from August 2002 up to April 2012
This is clear from figure (5) which shows the seasonal cycle of GRACE Total Water Storage (TWS) and rainfall data over Volta, Zambezi, and Okavango river basins. It shows that the rainfall over Volta River Basin reaches its maximum in August while GRACE TWS is maximum in September. Since both Zambezi and Okavango river basins are in the same region, so their rainfall seasonal cycle are almost the same, it reaches its maximum in January while GRACE TWS reaching maximum in March and February for Zambezi and Okavango river basins respectively
Summary
Monitoring, understanding, and quantifying water cycle budget is of great importance in both continental and regional scales, especially in light of current global climate change. Monitoring the total water stored within river basins in Africa is crucial for growing population and agriculture. Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd countries in Africa, in addition to the lack of regional hydrological models describing the water cycle in Africa. The using of global satellite data (e.g. GRACE) as well as global hydrological models (e.g. GLDAS) is of great importance for monitoring and understanding the water cycle in Africa. Studying the Total Water Storage (TWS) in some river basins in Africa (e.g. Volta River, Zambezi River, and Okavango River) is presented in this work. Seasonal and interannual scales of TWS variation will be studied as well as the effect of rainfall on TWS variation
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