Assessment of pluri-annual and decadal changes in terrestrial water storage predicted by global hydrological models in comparison with the GRACE satellite gravity mission

Pfeffer, Julia; Cazenave, Anny; Blazquez, Alejandro; Decharme, Bertrand; Munier, Simon; Barnoud, Anne

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3743-2023

Articles | Volume 27, issue 20

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3743-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3743-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 27, issue 20

Research article

|

25 Oct 2023

Research article |

| 25 Oct 2023

Assessment of pluri-annual and decadal changes in terrestrial water storage predicted by global hydrological models in comparison with the GRACE satellite gravity mission

Julia Pfeffer, Anny Cazenave, Alejandro Blazquez, Bertrand Decharme, Simon Munier, and Anne Barnoud

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3743-2023-supplement

Data sets

supplementary-material-for-egusphere-2022-1032 Julia Pfeffer https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7142392

Short summary

The GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) satellite mission enabled the quantification of water mass redistributions from 2002 to 2017. The analysis of GRACE satellite data shows here that slow changes in terrestrial water storage occurring over a few years to a decade are severely underestimated by global hydrological models. Several sources of errors may explain such biases, likely including the inaccurate representation of groundwater storage changes.