Climate change and water storage variability over an arid endorheic region

Both climate change and anthropogenic activities contribute to the deterioration of terrestrial water resources and ecosystems worldwide. Central Asian endorheic basins are among the most affected regions through both climate and human impacts. Here, we used a digital elevation model, digitized bathymetry maps and Landsat images to estimate the areal water cover extent and volumetric storage changes in small terminal lakes in Burabay National Nature Park (BNNP), located in Northern Central Asia (CA), for the period of 1986 to 2016. Based on the analysis of long-term climatic data from meteorological stations, short-term hydrometeorological network observations, gridded climate datasets (CRU) and global atmospheric reanalysis (ERA Interim), we have evaluated the impacts of historical climatic conditions on the water balance of BNNP lake catchments. We also discuss the future based on regional climate model projections. We attribute the overall decline of BNNP lakes to long-term deficit of water balance with lake evaporation loss exceeding precipitation inputs. Direct anthropogenic water abstraction has a minor importance in water balance. However, the changes in watersheds caused by the expansion of human settlements and roads disrupting water drainage may play a more significant role in lake water storage decline. More precise water resources assessment at the local scale will be facilitated by further development of freely available higher spatial resolution remote sensing products. In addition, the results of this work can be used for the development of lake/reservoir evaporation models driven by remote sensing and atmospheric reanalysis data without the direct use of ground observations.

Download Full-text

Potential for sustainable irrigation expansion in a 3 °C warmer climate

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.2017796117 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 117 (47) ◽

pp. 29526-29534

Author(s):

Lorenzo Rosa ◽

Davide Danilo Chiarelli ◽

Matteo Sangiorgio ◽

Areidy Aracely Beltran-Peña ◽

Maria Cristina Rulli ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Irrigation Water ◽

Water Demand ◽

Crop Production ◽

Cropping Systems ◽

Water Storage ◽

Future Research ◽

Irrigation Water Demand ◽

Starting Point ◽

Sustainable Irrigation

Climate change is expected to affect crop production worldwide, particularly in rain-fed agricultural regions. It is still unknown how irrigation water needs will change in a warmer planet and where freshwater will be locally available to expand irrigation without depleting freshwater resources. Here, we identify the rain-fed cropping systems that hold the greatest potential for investment in irrigation expansion because water will likely be available to suffice irrigation water demand. Using projections of renewable water availability and irrigation water demand under warming scenarios, we identify target regions where irrigation expansion may sustain crop production under climate change. Our results also show that global rain-fed croplands hold significant potential for sustainable irrigation expansion and that different irrigation strategies have different irrigation expansion potentials. Under a 3 °C warming, we find that a soft-path irrigation expansion with small monthly water storage and deficit irrigation has the potential to expand irrigated land by 70 million hectares and feed 300 million more people globally. We also find that a hard-path irrigation expansion with large annual water storage can sustainably expand irrigation up to 350 million hectares, while producing food for 1.4 billion more people globally. By identifying where irrigation can be expanded under a warmer climate, this work may serve as a starting point for investigating socioeconomic factors of irrigation expansion and may guide future research and resources toward those agricultural communities and water management institutions that will most need to adapt to climate change.

Download Full-text

Climate Change Made Major Contributions to Soil Water Storage Decline in the Southwestern US during 2003–2014

Water ◽

10.3390/w11091947 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 1947

Author(s):

Jianzhao Liu ◽

Liping Gao ◽

Fenghui Yuan ◽

Yuedong Guo ◽

Xiaofeng Xu

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Soil Water ◽

Water Resource Management ◽

Time Series Data ◽

Meteorological Data ◽

Water Storage ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Soil Water Storage ◽

Series Data ◽

Atmospheric Water

Soil water shortage is a critical issue for the Southwest US (SWUS), the typical arid region that has experienced severe droughts over the past decades, primarily caused by climate change. However, it is still not quantitatively understood how soil water storage in the SWUS is affected by climate change. We integrated the time-series data of water storage and evapotranspiration derived from satellite data, societal water consumption, and meteorological data to quantify soil water storage changes and their climate change impacts across the SWUS from 2003 to 2014. The water storage decline was found across the entire SWUS, with a significant reduction in 98.5% of the study area during the study period. The largest water storage decline occurred in the southeastern portion, while only a slight decline occurred in the western and southwestern portions of the SWUS. Net atmospheric water input could explain 38% of the interannual variation of water storage variation. The climate-change-induced decreases in net atmospheric water input predominately controlled the water storage decline in 60% of the SWUS (primarily in Texas, Eastern New Mexico, Eastern Arizona, and Oklahoma) and made a partial contribution in approximately 17% of the region (Central and Western SWUS). Climate change, primarily as precipitation reduction, made major contributions to the soil water storage decline in the SWUS. This study infers that water resource management must consider the climate change impacts over time and across space in the SWUS.

Download Full-text

An observation-based approach for global runoff estimation: exploiting satellite soil moisture and Grace

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-13718 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Stefania Camici ◽

Luca Brocca ◽

Christian Massari ◽

Gabriele Giuliani ◽

Nico Sneeuw ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Soil Moisture ◽

Water Storage ◽

Data Access ◽

Satellite Observations ◽

Terrestrial Water Storage ◽

Total Runoff ◽

The World ◽

Terrestrial Water ◽

Trmm 3B42

Water is at the centre of economic and social development; it is vital to maintain health, grow food, manage the environment, produce renewable energy, support industrial processes and create jobs. Despite the importance of water, to date over one third of the world's population still lacks access to drinking water resources and this number is expected to increase due to climate change and outdated water management. As over half of the world&#8217;s potable water supply is extracted from rivers, either directly or from reservoirs, understanding the variability of the stored water on and below landmasses, i.e., runoff, is of primary importance. Apart from river discharge observation networks that suffer from many known limitations (e.g., low station density and often incomplete temporal coverage, substantial delay in data access and large decline in monitoring capacity), runoff can be estimated through model-based or observation-based approaches whose outputs can be highly model or data dependent and characterised by large uncertainties.&#160;On this basis, developing innovative methods able to maximize the recovery of information on runoff contained in current satellite observations of climatic and environmental variables (i.e., precipitation, soil moisture, terrestrial water storage anomalies and land cover) becomes mandatory and urgent. In this respect, within the European Space Agency (ESA) STREAM Project (SaTellite based Runoff Evaluation And Mapping), a solid &#8220;observational&#8221; approach, exploiting space-only observations of Precipitation (P), Soil Moisture (SM) and Terrestrial Water Storage Anomalies (TWSA) to derive total runoff has been developed and validated. Different P and SM products have been considered. For P, both in situ and satellite-based (e.g., Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, TRMM 3B42) datasets have been collected; for SM, Advanced SCATterometer, ASCAT, and ESA Climate Change Initiative, ESA CCI, soil moisture products have been extracted. TWSA time series are obtained from the latest Goddard Space Flight Center&#8217;s global mascon model, which provides storage anomalies and their uncertainties in the form of monthly surface mass densities per approximately 1&#176;x1&#176; blocks.&#160;Total runoff estimates have been simulated for the period 2003-2017 at 5 pilot basins across the world (Mississippi, Amazon, Niger, Danube and Murray Darling) characterised by different physiographic/climatic features. Results proved the potentiality of satellite observations to estimate runoff at daily time scale and at spatial resolution better than GRACE spatial sampling. In particular, by using satellite TRMM 3B42 rainfall data and ESA CCI soil moisture data, very good runoff estimates have been obtained over Amazon basin, with a Kling-Gupta efficiency (KGE) index greater than 0.92 both at the closure and over several inner stations in the basin. Good results found for Mississippi and Danube are also encouraging with KGE index greater than 0.75 for both the basins.

Download Full-text

WATER STORAGE AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN GREAT BRITAIN - THE ROLE OF GROUNDWATER.

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Water Maritime and Energy ◽

10.1680/iwtme.1998.30227 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 130 (1) ◽

pp. 42-50 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

M PRICE

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Great Britain ◽

Water Storage

Download Full-text

Temporal-spatial differences in lake water storage changes and their links to climate change throughout the Tibetan Plateau

Remote Sensing of Environment ◽

10.1016/j.rse.2018.12.037 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 222 ◽

pp. 232-243 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Baojin Qiao ◽

Liping Zhu ◽

Ruimin Yang

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Tibetan Plateau ◽

Lake Water ◽

Water Storage ◽

The Tibetan Plateau ◽

Spatial Differences

Download Full-text

Soil-Water Storage Predictions for Cultivated Crops on the Záhorská Lowlands

Slovak Journal of Civil Engineering ◽

10.1515/sjce-2016-0010 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 31-40

Author(s):

Miroslava Jarabicová ◽

Peter Minarič

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Soil Water ◽

Climate Model ◽

Spring Barley ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Water Storage ◽

Soil Water Storage ◽

Reference Period ◽

The Impact ◽

Upper Boundary

Abstract The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of climate change on the soil-water regime of the Záhorská lowlands. The consequences of climate change on soil-water storage were analyzed for two crops: spring barley and maize. We analyzed the consequences of climate change on soil-water storage for two crops: spring barley and maize. The soil-water storage was simulated with the GLOBAL mathematical model. The data entered into the model as upper boundary conditions were established by the SRES A2 and SRES B1 climate scenarios and the KNMI regional climate model for the years from 2071 to 2100 (in the text called the time horizon 2085 which is in the middle this period). For the reference period the data from the years 1961-1990 was used. The results of this paper predict soil-water storage until the end of this century for the crops evaluated, as well as a comparison of the soil-water storage predictions with the course of the soil-water storage during the reference period.

Download Full-text

Water Storage Monitoring in the Aral Sea and its Endorheic Basin from Multisatellite Data and a Hydrological Model

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs12152408 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (15) ◽

pp. 2408

Author(s):

Delong Tao ◽

Hongling Shi ◽

Chunchun Gao ◽

Jingang Zhan ◽

Xiaoping Ke

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Satellite Altimetry ◽

Anthropogenic Activities ◽

Water Storage ◽

Image Data ◽

Aral Sea ◽

Impact Of Climate Change ◽

Endorheic Basin ◽

The Impact ◽

Storage Change

Inland water storage change is a fundamental part of the hydrologic cycle, which reflects the impact of climate change and anthropogenic activities on water resources. In this study, we used multisatellite data (from satellite altimetry, remote sensing, and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)) to investigate water storage changes in the Aral Sea and its endorheic basin. The water storage depletion rate in the Aral Sea from calibrated hypsometric curves (CHCs) created by satellite altimetry and image data agrees with the GRACE-derived result using the Slepian space domain inverse method (SSDIM). Compared with the combined filtering method (CFM) and mascon solutions, the SSDIM was shown to be an effective method of reducing the GRACE leakage error and restoring the signal attenuation in the Aral Sea. Moreover, we used the WaterGAP global hydrology model (WGHM) to qualitatively analyze the variations in the water storage components. The results show that the groundwater in the Aral Sea affects the change in the interannual water storage, especially during the extreme dry and humid periods. However, from the long-term water storage trend, the decrease in the surface storage dominates the shrinking of the Aral Sea. In addition, more details of the water storage change pattern in the endorheic basin were revealed by the enhanced GRACE solution. Our findings accentuate the severe water storage states of the Aral Sea endorheic basin under the impact of climate change and human interventions.

Download Full-text

Impacts of Climate Change on the Hydro-Climate of Peninsular Malaysia

Water ◽

10.3390/w11091798 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 1798 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ir. Mohd Zaki bin Mat Amin ◽

Ali Ercan ◽

Kei Ishida ◽

M. Levent Kavvas ◽

Z.Q. Chen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

21St Century ◽

Climate Model ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Water Storage ◽

Peninsular Malaysia ◽

Soil Water Storage ◽

Historical Period ◽

Coastal Regions ◽

Impacts Of Climate Change

In this study, a regional climate model was used to dynamically downscale 15 future climate projections from three GCMs covering four emission scenarios (SRES B1, A1FI, A1B, A2) based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 3 (CMIP3) datasets to 6-km horizontal resolution over the whole Peninsular Malaysia. Impacts of climate change in the 21st century on the precipitation, air temperature, and soil water storage were assessed covering ten watersheds and twelve coastal regions. Then, by coupling a physical hydrology model with the regional climate model, the impacts of the climate change on river flows were assessed at the outlets of ten watersheds in Peninsular Malaysia. It was found that the increase in the 30-year mean annual precipitation from 1970–2000 to 2070–2100 will vary from 17.1 to 36.3 percent among the ten watersheds, and from 22.9 to 45.4 percent among twelve coastal regions. The ensemble average of the basin-average annual mean air temperature will increase about 2.52 °C to 2.95 °C from 2010 to 2100. In comparison to the historical period, the change in the 30-year mean basin-average annual mean soil water storage over the ten watersheds will vary from 0.7 to 10.9 percent at the end of 21st century, and that over the twelve coastal regions will vary from −1.7 to 15.8 percent. Ensemble averages of the annual mean flows of the 15 projections show increasing trends for the 10 watersheds, especially in the second half of the 21st century. In comparison to the historical period, the change in the 30-year average annual mean flows will vary from −2.1 to 14.3 percent in the early 21st century, 4.4 to 23.8 percent in the middle 21st century, and 19.1 to 45.8 percent in the end of 21st century.

Download Full-text