A Review of Irrigation Information Retrievals from Space and Their Utility for Users

Irrigation represents one of the most impactful human interventions in the terrestrial water cycle. Knowing the distribution and extent of irrigated areas as well as the amount of water used for irrigation plays a central role in modeling irrigation water requirements and quantifying the impact of irrigation on regional climate, river discharge, and groundwater depletion. Obtaining high-quality global information about irrigation is challenging, especially in terms of quantification of the water actually used for irrigation. Here, we review existing Earth observation datasets, models, and algorithms used for irrigation mapping and quantification from the field to the global scale. The current observation capacities are confronted with the results of a survey on user requirements on satellite-observed irrigation for agricultural water resources’ management. Based on this information, we identify current shortcomings of irrigation monitoring capabilities from space and phrase guidelines for potential future satellite missions and observation strategies.

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Intercomparison of terrestrial water budgets in EURO-CORDEX and TSMP evaluation runs

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-5745 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mohamed Eltahan ◽

Klaus Goergen ◽

Carina Furusho-Percot ◽

Stefan Kollet

Keyword(s):

Land Surface ◽

Water Budget ◽

Climate Models ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Weather Prediction ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Shallow Groundwater ◽

Surface Model ◽

Frequency Distributions ◽

Terrestrial Water

Water is one of Earth&#8217;s most important geo-ecosystem components. Here we present an evaluation of water cycle components using 12 EURO-CORDEX Regional Climate Models (RCMs) and the Terrestrial Systems Modeling Platform (TSMP) from ERA-Interim driven evaluation runs. Unlike the other RCMs, TSMP provides an integrated representation of the terrestrial water cycle by coupling the numerical weather prediction model COSMO, the land surface model CLM and the surface-subsurface hydrological model ParFlow, which simulates shallow groundwater states and fluxes. The study analyses precipitation (P), evapotranspiration (E), runoff (R), and terrestrial water storage (TWS=P-E-R) at a 0.11degree spatial resolution (about 12km) on EUR-11 CORDEX grid from 1996 to 2008. As reference datasets, we use ERA5 reanalysis to represent the complete terrestrial water budget, as well as the E-OBS, GLEAM and E-Run datasets for precipitation, evapotranspiration and runoff, respectively. The terrestrial water budget is investigated for twenty catchments over Europe (Guadalquivir, Guadiana, Tagus, Douro, Ebro, Garonne, Rhone, Po, Seine, Rhine, Loire, Maas, Weser, Elbe, Oder, Vistuala, Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, and Neman). Annual cycles, seasonal variations, empirical frequency distributions, spatial distributions for the water cycle components and budgets over the catchments are assessed. The analysis demonstrates the capability of the RCMs and TSMP to reproduce the overall characteristics of the water cycle over the EURO-CORDEX domain, which is a prerequisite if, e.g., climate change projections with the CORDEX RCMs or TSMP are to be used for vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation studies.

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Terrestrial Water Cycle and the Impact of Climate Change

AMBIO ◽

10.1579/0044-7447(2003)032[0295:twcati]2.0.co;2 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 295-301 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Impact Of Climate Change ◽

Terrestrial Water ◽

The Impact

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Terrestrial Water Cycle and the Impact of Climate Change

AMBIO ◽

10.1579/0044-7447-32.4.295 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 295-301 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Fulu Tao ◽

Masayuki Yokozawa ◽

Yousay Hayashi ◽

Erda Lin

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Impact Of Climate Change ◽

Terrestrial Water ◽

The Impact

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Global-scale analysis of satellite-derived time series of naturally inundated areas as a basis for floodplain modeling

Advances in Geosciences ◽

10.5194/adgeo-27-45-2010 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 27 ◽

pp. 45-50 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

L. Adam ◽

P. Döll ◽

C. Prigent ◽

F. Papa

Keyword(s):

Time Series ◽

Land Surface ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Open Water ◽

Global Scale ◽

Irrigated Rice ◽

Surface Models ◽

Terrestrial Water ◽

Inundation Extent ◽

And Storage

Abstract. Floodplains play an important role in the terrestrial water cycle and are very important for biodiversity. Therefore, an improved representation of the dynamics of floodplain water flows and storage in global hydrological and land surface models is required. To support model validation, we combined monthly time series of satellite-derived inundation areas (Papa et al., 2010) with data on irrigated rice areas (Portmann et al., 2010). In this way, we obtained global-scale time series of naturally inundated areas (NIA), with monthly values of inundation extent during 1993–2004 and a spatial resolution of 0.5°. For most grid cells (0.5°×0.5°), the mean annual maximum of NIA agrees well with the static open water extent of the Global Lakes and Wetlands database (GLWD) (Lehner and Döll, 2004), but in 16% of the cells NIA is larger than GLWD. In some regions, like Northwestern Europe, NIA clearly overestimates inundated areas, probably because of confounding very wet soils with inundated areas. In other areas, such as South Asia, it is likely that NIA can help to enhance GLWD. NIA data will be very useful for developing and validating a floodplain modeling algorithm for the global hydrological model WGHM. For example, we found that monthly NIAs correlate with observed river discharges.

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Pan-European groundwater to atmosphere terrestrial systems climatology from a physically consistent simulation

Scientific Data ◽

10.1038/s41597-019-0328-7 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Carina Furusho-Percot ◽

Klaus Goergen ◽

Carl Hartick ◽

Ketan Kulkarni ◽

Jessica Keune ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Land Surface ◽

Climate Models ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Regional Climate Models ◽

Data Set ◽

Groundwater Dynamics ◽

Terrestrial System ◽

Terrestrial Water

AbstractApplying the Terrestrial Systems Modeling Platform, TSMP, this study provides the first simulated long-term (1996–2018), high-resolution (~12.5 km) terrestrial system climatology over Europe, which comprises variables from groundwater across the land surface to the top of the atmosphere (G2A). The data set offers an unprecedented opportunity to test hypotheses related to short- and long-range feedback processes in space and time between the different interacting compartments of the terrestrial system. The physical consistency of simulated states and fluxes in the terrestrial system constitutes the uniqueness of the data set: while most regional climate models (RCMs) have a tendency to simplify the soil moisture and groundwater representation, TSMP explicitly simulates a full 3D soil- and groundwater dynamics, closing the terrestrial water cycle from G2A. As anthopogenic impacts are excluded, the dataset may serve as a near-natural reference for global change simulations including human water use and climate change. The data set is available as netCDF files for the pan-European EURO-CORDEX domain.

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Isotopes in the Water Cycle: Regional- to Global-Scale Patterns and Applications

Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences ◽

10.1146/annurev-earth-053018-060220 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 453-479 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Gabriel J. Bowen ◽

Zhongyin Cai ◽

Richard P. Fiorella ◽

Annie L. Putman

Keyword(s):

Data Sharing ◽

Large Scale ◽

Quantitative Methods ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Isotope Ratios ◽

Global Scale ◽

Global Changes ◽

Regional Patterns ◽

The Past ◽

The Impact

Stable isotope ratios of hydrogen and oxygen have been applied to water cycle research for over 60 years. Over the past two decades, however, new data, data compilations, and quantitative methods have supported the application of isotopic data to address large-scale water cycle problems. Recent results have demonstrated the impact of climate variation on atmospheric water cycling, provided constraints on continental- to global-scale land-atmosphere water vapor fluxes, revealed biases in the sources of runoff in hydrological models, and illustrated regional patterns of water use and management by people. In the past decade, global isotopic observations have spurred new debate over the role of soils in the water cycle, with potential to impact both ecological and hydrological theory. Many components of the water cycle remain underrepresented in isotopic databases. Increasing accessibility of analyses and improved platforms for data sharing will refine and grow the breadth of these contributions in the future. ▪ Isotope ratios in water integrate information on hydrological processes over scales from cities to the globe. ▪ Tracing water with isotopes helps reveal the processes that govern variability in the water cycle and may govern future global changes. ▪ Improvements in instrumentation, data sharing, and quantitative analysis have advanced isotopic water cycle science over the past 20 years.

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Convection-Permitting Regional Climate Simulations over North America

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-3732 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Changhai Liu ◽

Kyoko Ikeda ◽

Roy Rasmussen

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

North America ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Water System ◽

Wrf Model ◽

Future Climate ◽

Convective Precipitation ◽

Historical Simulation ◽

The Impact

The NCAR Water System Program has been striving to improve the representation of the water cycle and its future changes in both regional and global models during the past decade. One of our efforts is conducting continental-scale convection-permitting simulations of the current and future climate of North America using the WRF model based atmospheric-hydrological coupling system. The major science objectives of these simulations are: 1) to evaluate the capability of convection-permitting WRF model in capturing orographic precipitation and snow mass balance over the western mountains of North America and convective precipitation in the eastern part of the continent; 2) to assess future changes in seasonal snowfall and snowpack and associated surface hydrological cycles under the CMIP5-projected global warming; 3) to investigate water cycle changes in response to climate warming, including the summertime convective precipitation and associated mesoscale convective storm tracks; and 4) to examine the impact of climate change on severe weather over North America. As such, two phases of convection-permitting climate modeling have been undertaken using 4-km horizontal grid spacing covering most of North America.The phase-one effort involves two 13-year simulations as reported in Liu et al. (2017): 1) a historical simulation with initial and boundary conditions from ERA-interim, and 2) a future climate sensitivity simulation, called pseudo-global warming (PGW), with modified reanalysis-derived initial and boundary conditions by adding the CMIP5 ensemble-mean projected climate change. These WRF-downscaled climate change simulations provide a unique high-resolution dataset to the community for studying one possible scenario of regional climate changes and impacts.Recognizing that only the thermodynamic future climate impacts can be adequately addressed in the PGW approach, the NCAR Water System team has started conducting a second set (phase II) of current and future simulations at 4-km grid spacing over North America. In these simulations, the WRF model is forced using the weather perturbations derived from the NCAR CESM model 6-hourly output plus the reanalysis-based bias-corrected CMIP5 ensemble mean climate as detailed in Dai et al. (2017). The model domain is also expanded northward to include Canada and the Canadian Arctic. Because storm track changes are permitted, these simulations complement the previous PGW simulations, allowing us to address the impact of dynamic changes in the future warmer climate. We will present some preliminary analysis results of these simulations, with focus on the evaluation of the historical simulation and the added value of convection-permitting resolution and mean climate bias corrections.

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The impact of perturbations to tropical aerosols and their precursors on local and remote climates

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-7537 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Chris Wells ◽

Apostolos Voulgarakis ◽

Matt Kasoar

Keyword(s):

Biomass Burning ◽

Regional Climate ◽

Global Scale ◽

Atmospheric Composition ◽

Carbonaceous Aerosol ◽

Emission Region ◽

Local Cooling ◽

Pollution Effects ◽

Aerosol Emissions ◽

The Impact

Aerosols are a major climate forcer, but their historical effect has the largest uncertainty of any forcing, and so their mechanisms and impacts must be better understood. Due to their short lifetime, aerosols have large impacts near their emission region, but they also have effects on the climate in remote locations. In recent years, studies have investigated the influences of regional aerosols on global and regional climate, and the mechanisms that lead to remote responses to their inhomogeneous forcing. However, there has been little work on the influence of emissions from the tropics, as the aforementioned studies typically focused only on northern mid-latitude pollution effects. This work uses the new UK Earth System Model (UKESM1) to investigate the atmospheric composition and climate effects of tropical aerosols and aerosol precursor emissions. We performed three idealised perturbation experiments in which a) tropical SO2 emissions were multiplied by a factor of 10; b) tropical biomass burning carbonaceous aerosol emissions were multiplied by 10; and c) tropical biomass burning carbonaceous aerosol emissions were entirely removed. Impacts on radiation fluxes, temperature, circulation and precipitation are investigated, both over the emission regions, where microphysical effects dominate, and remotely, where dynamical influences become more relevant. Increasing tropical SO2 emissions causes a global cooling, and the asymmetric forcing (stronger negative forcing in the Northern Hemisphere Tropics) drives a southward shift of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). The experiment with the large increase in tropical biomass burning organic carbon (OC) and black carbon (BC) features a net warming globally, and a local cooling in locations where the aerosol load increases the most, since OC and BC reduce radiation at the surface locally, causing cooling. However, whereas OC scatters radiation with a negative forcing, BC has a warming effect since it reduces the planetary albedo, and this warming wins out on the global scale. The forcing is asymmetric, but changes sign between seasons as biomass burning in Africa shifts across the Equator, driving a more complex response of the ITCZ. The removal of biomass burning OC and BC leads to opposite effects to the 10x increase, but with a smaller magnitude, and with dynamical changes playing a more important role than microphysical ones, relative to the larger perturbations. Using the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios (SSPs), transient future experiments have also been performed, testing the effect of Africa following a relatively more polluting route (SSP3-RCP7.0) to the rest of the world (SSP1-RCP1.9), relative to a global SSP1-RCP1.9 control. Preliminary results from this analysis will also be presented.

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The impact of global land-cover change on the terrestrial water cycle

Nature Climate Change ◽

10.1038/nclimate1690 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 3 (4) ◽

pp. 385-390 ◽

Cited By ~ 238

Author(s):

Shannon M. Sterling ◽

Agnès Ducharne ◽

Jan Polcher

Keyword(s):

Land Cover ◽

Land Cover Change ◽

Water Cycle ◽

Global Land Cover ◽

Global Land ◽

Terrestrial Water ◽

The Impact

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Impact of Groundwater Pumping on Flood Potential (FP) in Indian Sub-continental River Basins

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-1125 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Deep Shah ◽

Vimal Mishra

Keyword(s):

India Meteorological Department ◽

Water Security ◽

Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission ◽

River Basins ◽

Groundwater Depletion ◽

Groundwater Pumping ◽

Terrestrial Water ◽

Policy Measures ◽

Monthly Discharge ◽

The Impact

Rapid groundwater depletion is one of the most vital issues related to food and water security in India. However, the crucial role of groundwater pumping and associated policy measures on Flood Potential (FP) in Indian subcontinental river basins remains unexplored. In this study, we examine the impact of groundwater pumping on FP in the Indian subcontinental river basins, having different climatic characteristics. We used Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) from Gravity recovery climate experiment (GRACE) satellites and precipitation data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) to estimate FP. We estimated the trends of TWS and FP using the nonparametric Mann&#8211;Kendall (M-K) method and Sen&#8217;s slope method was used to calculate trend magnitudes. We evaluated the results of FP with observed monthly discharge. Moreover, we find a decline in FP in river basins having rapid groundwater depletion. However, no significant change in FP was found for basins where strong policy measures have taken against groundwater pumping.

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