Paper Info
Title
Emerging Changes In Terrestrial Water Storage Variability As A Target For Future Satellite Gravity Missions
Abstract
Climate change will affect the terrestrial water cycle during the next decades by impacting the seasonal cycle, interannual variations, and long-term linear trends of water stored at or beyond the surface. Since 2002, terrestrial water storage (TWS) has been globally observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its follow-on mission (GRACE-FO). Next Generation Gravity Missions (NGGMs) are planned to extend this record in the near future. Based on a multi-model ensemble of climate model output provided by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) covering the years 2002-2100, we assess possible changes in TWS variability with respect to present-day conditions to help defining scientific requirements for NGGMs. We find that present-day GRACE accuracies are sufficient to detect amplitude and phase changes in the seasonal cycle in a third of the land surface, whereas a five times more accurate double-pair mission could resolve such changes almost everywhere outside the most arid landscapes of our planet. We also select one individual model experiment out of the CMIP6 ensemble that closely matches both GRACE observations and the multi-model median of all CMIP6 realizations, which might serve as basis for satellite mission performance studies extending over many decades to demonstrate the suitability of NGGM satellite missions to monitor long-term climate variations in the terrestrial water cycle.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.3390/rs12233898
REMOTE SENSING
Keywords
DocType
Volume
terrestrial water storage, GRACE, CMIP6, climate models, climate projections, variability, next generation gravity missions
Journal
12
Issue
Citations 
PageRank 
23
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Laura Jensen100.34
Annette Eicker200.68
Henryk Dobslaw3172.44
Roland Pail432.77