Validation of GRACE based groundwater storage anomaly using in-situ groundwater level measurements in India

Soumendra N. Bhanja; Abhijit Mukherjee; Dipankar Saha; Isabella Velicogna; James S. Famiglietti

doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.10.042

Validation of GRACE based groundwater storage anomaly using in-situ groundwater level measurements in India

Soumendra N. Bhanja, Abhijit Mukherjee, Dipankar Saha, Isabella Velicogna, James S. Famiglietti

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Abstract

In this study, we tried to validate groundwater storage (GWS) anomaly obtained from a combination of GRACE and land-surface model based estimates, for the first time, with GWS anomaly obtained from a dense network of in-situ groundwater observation wells within 12 major river basins in India. We used seasonal data from >15,000 groundwater observation wells between 2005 and 2013, distributed all over the country. Two recently released GRACE products, RL05 spherical harmonics (SH) and RL05 mascon (MS) products are used for comparison with in-situ data. To our knowledge, this is the first study of comparing the performance of two independent GRACE products at a sub-continental scale. Also for the first time, we have created a high resolution (0.1⁰ × 0.1⁰) map of specific yield for the entire country that was used for calculating GWS. Observed GWS anomalies have been computed using water level anomalies and specific yield information for the locale of individual observation wells that are up-scaled to basin-scale in order to compare with GRACE-based estimates. In general GRACE-based estimates match well (on the basis of the statistical analyses performed in the study) with observed estimates in most of the river basins. On comparing with observed GWS anomaly, GRACE-SH estimates match well in terms of RMSE, while GRACE-MS estimates show better association in terms of correlation, while the output of skewness, kurtosis, coefficient of variation (CV) and scatter analyses remain inconclusive for inter-comparison between two GRACE estimates. We used a non-parametric trend estimation approach, the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter, to further assess the performance of the two GRACE estimates. GRACE-MS estimates clearly outperform GRACE-SH estimates for reproducing observed GWS anomaly trends with significantly (>95% confidence level) strong association in 10 out of 12 basins for GRACE-MS estimates, on the other hand, GRACE-SH estimates show significantly (>95% confidence level) strong association in 6 out of 12 basins. On the basis of the study output, we recommend using GRACE-MS estimates for groundwater studies over the region and other regions of the globe with similar climatic, hydrogeologic or groundwater withdrawal conditions.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	729-738
Number of pages	10
Journal	Journal of Hydrology
Volume	543
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.10.042
State	Published - Dec 1 2016
Externally published	Yes

Funding

We thank Dr. Matthew Rodell, NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center for his advices and Dr. Siddhartha Chattopadhyay, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, for his advices and suggestions on statistical analyses. This manuscript uses open-source data of the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Government of India. Dr. Saha acknowledge the support provided by the Chairman, CGWB, during the study. The opinion expressed in the paper is of author’s own and not of the affiliated agency. Soumendra Nath Bhanja (SNB) acknowledges CSIR (India) for their support through SPM fellowship. SNB also acknowledges U.S. Department of State for the Fulbright fellowship. Abhijit Mukherjee acknowledges the support from Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) project AGI (IIT/SRIC/GG & CSE/AGI/2013-14/201), Application of artificial intelligence in groundwater storage estimation of Indian subcontinent, and Prof. Sudeshna Sarkar and Prof. Pabitra Mitra for their support. We acknowledge Pragnaditya Malakar and Charu Nirmale, for their help with groundwater level data retrievals. SNB also thanks Dr. Shubha Verma for her advice. GRACE land data were processed by Sean Swenson, supported by the NASA MEaSUREs Program, and is available at http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov . The GLDAS data used in this study were acquired as part of the mission of NASA’s Earth Science Division and archived and distributed by the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC). Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) (2011), TRMM (TMPA/3B43) Rainfall Estimate L3 1 month 0.25 degree × 0.25 degree V7, version, Greenbelt, MD, Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), Accessed on 20th November, 2015. We would like to thank Geoff Syme, Editor-in-Chief, Craig T. Simmon, Associate Editor, and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the manuscript.

Funders	Funder number
SPM
U.S. Department of State for the Fulbright
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India
Ministry of Human Resource Development	CSE/AGI/2013-14/201

Keywords

GRACE validation
Groundwater
India
Specific yield

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.jhydrol.2016.10.042

Cite this

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title = "Validation of GRACE based groundwater storage anomaly using in-situ groundwater level measurements in India",

abstract = "In this study, we tried to validate groundwater storage (GWS) anomaly obtained from a combination of GRACE and land-surface model based estimates, for the first time, with GWS anomaly obtained from a dense network of in-situ groundwater observation wells within 12 major river basins in India. We used seasonal data from >15,000 groundwater observation wells between 2005 and 2013, distributed all over the country. Two recently released GRACE products, RL05 spherical harmonics (SH) and RL05 mascon (MS) products are used for comparison with in-situ data. To our knowledge, this is the first study of comparing the performance of two independent GRACE products at a sub-continental scale. Also for the first time, we have created a high resolution (0.10 × 0.10) map of specific yield for the entire country that was used for calculating GWS. Observed GWS anomalies have been computed using water level anomalies and specific yield information for the locale of individual observation wells that are up-scaled to basin-scale in order to compare with GRACE-based estimates. In general GRACE-based estimates match well (on the basis of the statistical analyses performed in the study) with observed estimates in most of the river basins. On comparing with observed GWS anomaly, GRACE-SH estimates match well in terms of RMSE, while GRACE-MS estimates show better association in terms of correlation, while the output of skewness, kurtosis, coefficient of variation (CV) and scatter analyses remain inconclusive for inter-comparison between two GRACE estimates. We used a non-parametric trend estimation approach, the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter, to further assess the performance of the two GRACE estimates. GRACE-MS estimates clearly outperform GRACE-SH estimates for reproducing observed GWS anomaly trends with significantly (>95% confidence level) strong association in 10 out of 12 basins for GRACE-MS estimates, on the other hand, GRACE-SH estimates show significantly (>95% confidence level) strong association in 6 out of 12 basins. On the basis of the study output, we recommend using GRACE-MS estimates for groundwater studies over the region and other regions of the globe with similar climatic, hydrogeologic or groundwater withdrawal conditions.",

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AU - Mukherjee, Abhijit

AU - Saha, Dipankar

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AU - Famiglietti, James S.

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N2 - In this study, we tried to validate groundwater storage (GWS) anomaly obtained from a combination of GRACE and land-surface model based estimates, for the first time, with GWS anomaly obtained from a dense network of in-situ groundwater observation wells within 12 major river basins in India. We used seasonal data from >15,000 groundwater observation wells between 2005 and 2013, distributed all over the country. Two recently released GRACE products, RL05 spherical harmonics (SH) and RL05 mascon (MS) products are used for comparison with in-situ data. To our knowledge, this is the first study of comparing the performance of two independent GRACE products at a sub-continental scale. Also for the first time, we have created a high resolution (0.10 × 0.10) map of specific yield for the entire country that was used for calculating GWS. Observed GWS anomalies have been computed using water level anomalies and specific yield information for the locale of individual observation wells that are up-scaled to basin-scale in order to compare with GRACE-based estimates. In general GRACE-based estimates match well (on the basis of the statistical analyses performed in the study) with observed estimates in most of the river basins. On comparing with observed GWS anomaly, GRACE-SH estimates match well in terms of RMSE, while GRACE-MS estimates show better association in terms of correlation, while the output of skewness, kurtosis, coefficient of variation (CV) and scatter analyses remain inconclusive for inter-comparison between two GRACE estimates. We used a non-parametric trend estimation approach, the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter, to further assess the performance of the two GRACE estimates. GRACE-MS estimates clearly outperform GRACE-SH estimates for reproducing observed GWS anomaly trends with significantly (>95% confidence level) strong association in 10 out of 12 basins for GRACE-MS estimates, on the other hand, GRACE-SH estimates show significantly (>95% confidence level) strong association in 6 out of 12 basins. On the basis of the study output, we recommend using GRACE-MS estimates for groundwater studies over the region and other regions of the globe with similar climatic, hydrogeologic or groundwater withdrawal conditions.

AB - In this study, we tried to validate groundwater storage (GWS) anomaly obtained from a combination of GRACE and land-surface model based estimates, for the first time, with GWS anomaly obtained from a dense network of in-situ groundwater observation wells within 12 major river basins in India. We used seasonal data from >15,000 groundwater observation wells between 2005 and 2013, distributed all over the country. Two recently released GRACE products, RL05 spherical harmonics (SH) and RL05 mascon (MS) products are used for comparison with in-situ data. To our knowledge, this is the first study of comparing the performance of two independent GRACE products at a sub-continental scale. Also for the first time, we have created a high resolution (0.10 × 0.10) map of specific yield for the entire country that was used for calculating GWS. Observed GWS anomalies have been computed using water level anomalies and specific yield information for the locale of individual observation wells that are up-scaled to basin-scale in order to compare with GRACE-based estimates. In general GRACE-based estimates match well (on the basis of the statistical analyses performed in the study) with observed estimates in most of the river basins. On comparing with observed GWS anomaly, GRACE-SH estimates match well in terms of RMSE, while GRACE-MS estimates show better association in terms of correlation, while the output of skewness, kurtosis, coefficient of variation (CV) and scatter analyses remain inconclusive for inter-comparison between two GRACE estimates. We used a non-parametric trend estimation approach, the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter, to further assess the performance of the two GRACE estimates. GRACE-MS estimates clearly outperform GRACE-SH estimates for reproducing observed GWS anomaly trends with significantly (>95% confidence level) strong association in 10 out of 12 basins for GRACE-MS estimates, on the other hand, GRACE-SH estimates show significantly (>95% confidence level) strong association in 6 out of 12 basins. On the basis of the study output, we recommend using GRACE-MS estimates for groundwater studies over the region and other regions of the globe with similar climatic, hydrogeologic or groundwater withdrawal conditions.

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Validation of GRACE based groundwater storage anomaly using in-situ groundwater level measurements in India

Abstract

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Keywords

UN SDGs

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