An analysis of terrestrial water storage variations in Illinois with implications for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)

Variations in terrestrial water storage affect weather, climate, geophysical phenomena, and life on land, yet observation and understanding of terrestrial water storage are deficient. However, estimates of terrestrial water storage changes soon may be derived from observations of Earth's time-dependent gravity field made by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). Previous studies have evaluated that concept using modeled soil moisture and snow data. This investigation builds upon their results by relying on observations rather than modeled results, by analyzing groundwater and surface water variations as well as snow and soil water variations, and by using a longer time series. Expected uncertainty in GRACE-derived water storage changes are compared to monthly, seasonal, and annual terrestrial water storage changes estimated from observations in Illinois (145,800 km2). Assuming those changes are representative of larger regions, detectability is possible given a 200,000 km2 or larger area. Changes in soil moisture are typically the largest component of terrestrial water storage variations, followed by changes in groundwater plus intermediate zone storage.

[1]  Gravity and the hydrosphere: new frontier , 1999 .

[2]  Sally McConkey Broeren,et al.  Mitigative Measures for At-risk Public Surface Water Supply Systems in Illinois , 1990 .

[3]  K. Wolter,et al.  Measuring the strength of ENSO events: How does 1997/98 rank? , 1998 .

[4]  R. Reynolds,et al.  The NCEP/NCAR 40-Year Reanalysis Project , 1996, Renewable Energy.

[5]  Stanley A. Changnon,et al.  Climatic Aspects of the 1993 Upper Mississippi River Basin Flood , 1994 .

[6]  Elfatih A. B. Eltahir,et al.  Hydroclimatology of Illinois: A comparison of monthly evaporation estimates based on atmospheric water balance and soil water balance , 1998 .

[7]  B. Chao,et al.  Global surface-water-induced seasonal variations in the earth's rotation and gravitational field , 1988 .

[8]  E. Eltahir,et al.  On the asymmetric response of aquifer water level to floods and droughts in Illinois , 1999 .

[9]  F. Bryan,et al.  Time variability of the Earth's gravity field: Hydrological and oceanic effects and their possible detection using GRACE , 1998 .

[10]  Scott A. Isard,et al.  A Soil Moisture Climatology of Illinois , 1994 .

[11]  A. Robock,et al.  The Global Soil Moisture Data Bank , 2000 .

[12]  Fabio Castelli,et al.  Mutual interaction of soil moisture state and atmospheric processes , 1996 .

[13]  Matthew Rodell,et al.  Detectability of variations in continental water storage from satellite observations of the time dependent gravity field , 1999 .

[14]  C. G. Lonnquist,et al.  A real-time climate information system for the midwestern United States , 1990 .

[15]  Gary S. E. Lagerloef,et al.  Satellite Gravity and the Geosphere: Contributions to the Study of the Solid Earth and Its Fluid Earth , 1998 .

[16]  Byron D. Tapley,et al.  Seasonal global water mass budget and mean sea level variations , 1998 .

[17]  Fuzhong Weng,et al.  An eight-year (1987-1994) time series of rainfall, clouds, water vapor, snow cover, and sea ice derived from SSM/I measurements , 1996 .

[18]  S. Changnon,et al.  Relations between precipitation and shallow groundwater in Illinois , 1988 .

[19]  Thomas J. Jackson,et al.  Soil moisture mapping at regional scales using microwave radiometry: the Southern Great Plains Hydrology Experiment , 1999, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote. Sens..

[20]  J. Kuehne,et al.  Terrestrial water storage and polar motion , 1991 .