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Closing the terrestrial water budget from satellite remote sensing

Closing the terrestrial water budget from satellite remote sensing
Closing the terrestrial water budget from satellite remote sensing

[1] The increasing availability of remote sensing products for all components of the terrestrial water cycle makes it now possible to evaluate the potential of water balance closure purely from remote sensing sources. We take precipitation (P) from the TMPA and CMORPH products, a Penman-Monteith based evapotranspiration (E) estimate derived from NASA Aqua satellite data and terrestrial water storage change (ΔS) from the GRACE satellite. Their combined ability to close the water budget is evaluated over the Mississippi River basin for 2003-5 by estimating streamflow (Q) as a residual of the water budget and comparing to streamfiow measurements. We find that Q is greatly overestimated due mainly to the high bias in P, especially in the summer. Removal of systematic biases in P reduces the error significantly. However, uncertainties in the individual budget components due to simplifications in process algorithms and input data error are generally larger than the measured streamfiow.

0094-8276
Sheffield, Justin
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Ferguson, Craig R.
b9d14f97-34c8-44c2-a0d7-f97147d0063c
Troy, Tara J.
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Wood, Eric F.
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McCabe, Matthew F.
728c3adf-8316-4a9f-9409-a5b0a2125482
Sheffield, Justin
dd66575b-a4dc-4190-ad95-df2d6aaaaa6b
Ferguson, Craig R.
b9d14f97-34c8-44c2-a0d7-f97147d0063c
Troy, Tara J.
0f42a33e-d70e-4f52-a559-718f4a25d8d8
Wood, Eric F.
8352c1b4-4fd3-42fe-bd23-46619024f1cf
McCabe, Matthew F.
728c3adf-8316-4a9f-9409-a5b0a2125482

Sheffield, Justin, Ferguson, Craig R., Troy, Tara J., Wood, Eric F. and McCabe, Matthew F. (2009) Closing the terrestrial water budget from satellite remote sensing. Geophysical Research Letters, 36 (7), [L07403]. (doi:10.1029/2009GL037338).

Record type: Article

Abstract

[1] The increasing availability of remote sensing products for all components of the terrestrial water cycle makes it now possible to evaluate the potential of water balance closure purely from remote sensing sources. We take precipitation (P) from the TMPA and CMORPH products, a Penman-Monteith based evapotranspiration (E) estimate derived from NASA Aqua satellite data and terrestrial water storage change (ΔS) from the GRACE satellite. Their combined ability to close the water budget is evaluated over the Mississippi River basin for 2003-5 by estimating streamflow (Q) as a residual of the water budget and comparing to streamfiow measurements. We find that Q is greatly overestimated due mainly to the high bias in P, especially in the summer. Removal of systematic biases in P reduces the error significantly. However, uncertainties in the individual budget components due to simplifications in process algorithms and input data error are generally larger than the measured streamfiow.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 10 March 2009
Published date: 16 April 2009

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 480892
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/480892
ISSN: 0094-8276
PURE UUID: 03a147b1-0c98-4562-98e1-a6aa9885358f
ORCID for Justin Sheffield: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-2400-0630

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Date deposited: 10 Aug 2023 16:43
Last modified: 06 Jun 2024 01:54

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Contributors

Author: Craig R. Ferguson
Author: Tara J. Troy
Author: Eric F. Wood
Author: Matthew F. McCabe

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