Browsing by Author "Saemian, Peyman"

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Open Access
Analyzing and characterizing spaceborne observation of water storage variation : past, present, future
(2024) Saemian, Peyman; Sneeuw, Nico (Prof. Dr.-Ing.)
Water storage is an indispensable constituent of the intricate water cycle, as it governs the availability and distribution of this precious resource. Any alteration in the water storage can trigger a cascade of consequences, affecting not only our agricultural practices but also the well-being of various ecosystems and the occurrence of natural hazards. Therefore, it is essential to monitor and manage the water storage levels prudently to ensure a sustainable future for our planet. Despite significant advancements in ground-based measurements and modeling techniques, accurately measuring water storage variation remained a major challenge for a long time. Since 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its successor GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellites have revolutionized our understanding of the Earth's water cycle. By detecting variations in the Earth's gravity field caused by changes in water distribution, these satellites can precisely measure changes in total water storage (TWS) across the entire globe, providing a truly comprehensive view of the world's water resources. This information has proved invaluable for understanding how water resources are changing over time, and for developing strategies to manage these resources sustainably. However, GRACE and GRACE-FO are subject to various challenges that must be addressed in order to enhance the efficacy of our exploitation of GRACE observations for scientific and practical purposes. This thesis aims to address some of the challenges faced by GRACE and GRACE-FO. Since the inception of the GRACE mission, scholars have commonly extracted mass changes from observations by approximating the Earth's gravity field utilizing mathematical functions termed spherical harmonics. Various institutions have already processed GRACE(-FO) data, known as level-2 data in the GRACE community, considering the constraints, approaches, and models that have been utilized. However, this processed data necessitates post-processing to be used for several applications, such as hydrology and climate research. In this thesis, we evaluate various methods of processing GRACE(-FO) level-2 data and assess the spatio-temporal effect of the post-processing steps. Furthermore, we aim to compare the consistency between GRACE and its successor mission, GRACE-FO, in terms of data quality and measurement accuracy. By analyzing and comparing the data from these two missions, we can identify any potential discrepancies or differences and establish the level of confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the GRACE-FO measurements. Finally, we will compare the processed level-3 products with the level-3 products that are presently accessible online. The relatively short record of the GRACE measurements, compared to other satellite missions and observational records, can limit some studies that require long-term data. This short record makes it challenging to separate long-term signals from short-term variability and validate the data with ground-based measurements or other satellite missions. To address this limitation, this thesis expands the temporal coverage of GRACE(-FO) observations using global hydrological, atmospheric, and reanalysis models. First, we assess these models in estimating the TWS variation at a global scale. We compare the performance of various methods including data-driven and machine learning approaches in incorporating models and reconstruct GRACE TWS change. The results are also validated against Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) observations over the pre-GRACE period. This thesis develops a hindcasted GRACE, which provides a better understanding of the changes in the Earth's water storage on a longer time scale. The GRACE satellite mission detects changes in the overall water storage in a specific region but cannot distinguish between the different compartments of TWS, such as surface water, groundwater, and soil moisture. Understanding these individual components is crucial for managing water resources and addressing the effects of droughts and floods. This study aims to integrate various data sources to improve our understanding of water storage variations at the continental to basin scale, including water fluxes, lake water level, and lake storage change data. Additionally, the study demonstrates the importance of combining GRACE(-FO) observations with other measurements, such as piezometric wells and rain-gauges, to understand the water scarcity predicament in Iran and other regions facing similar challenges. The GRACE satellite mission provides valuable insights into the Earth's system. However, the GRACE product has a level of uncertainty due to several error sources. While the mission has taken measures to minimize these uncertainties, researchers need to account for them when analyzing the data and communicate them when reporting findings. This thesis proposes a probabilistic approach to incorporate the Total Water Storage Anomaly (TWSA) data from GRACE(-FO). By accounting for the uncertainty in the TWSA data, this approach can provide a more comprehensive understanding of drought conditions, which is essential for decision makers managing water resources and responding to drought events.
Open Access
Characterizing storage-based drought using satellite gravimetry
(2021) Saemian, Peyman
Drought is a complex phenomenon leading to a wide range of socio-economic, environmental, and political problems. The storage-based drought which represents the persistent lack of water in different levels of the Total Water Storage (TWS) from deep groundwater to surface water plays a vital role in proactive drought management. Despite its necessity, TWS could not be monitored due to the lack of consistent measurements from regional to continental scale. Since its launch in 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (grace) mission and its successor GRACE Follow-On have provided unique observations of the TWS change at the global scale. In this study, we have investigated characterizing the storage-based drought at the global scale using GRACE measurements. To this end, the Equivalent Water Height (EWH) has been retrieved from GRACE level 02 solutions. We have addressed the short record of GRACE observations in capturing the full hydroclimate variations. Based on our analysis, regions with a considerable direct human intervention like overexploitation of groundwater in the Middle East, regions that were affected by climate change like ice-melting over the Mackenzie river basin in Canada, or extreme precipitation events over the Ob river basin in the boreal regions are more sensitive to the length of ewh time series. Due to the crucial need for a long (at least 30 years) record of EWH, we have extended GRACE observations back to 1980 using an ensemble of models. The extended dataset has been developed using a pixel-wise selection of best-performed models among global hydrological models, land surface models, and atmospheric reanalysis models. The extended dataset has been used in the study for drought characterization over the grac period. The proposed Storage-based Drought Index (SDI) successfully captured the documented drought events globally in terms of intensity and spatio-temporal distribution. Moreover, the analysis of SDI over the five classes of drought from D0 as abnormally dry to D4 as exceptional drought showed that most regions have suffered at least once from the storage-based drought over the GRACE period (2002–2016). Besides, the map of exceptional drought frequency highlights regions with significant groundwater extraction like California, the Middle East, and north of India and regions with exceptional shifts in the precipitation and temperature pattern and intensity like Amazon in South America and China. Finally, our comparison of SDI with three most widely used drought indices namely the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) reveals that despite their high correlation over climate-driven regions, these indices failed to characterize anthropogenic drought events, especially over regions with considerable groundwater withdraws. The study allows for a more informative storage-based drought with a more robust climatology as the reference, thus enabling a more realistic risk assessment.
Open Access
Interrelations of vegetation growth and water scarcity in Iran revealed by satellite time series
(2022) Behling, Robert; Roessner, Sigrid; Foerster, Saskia; Saemian, Peyman; Tourian, Mohammad J.; Portele, Tanja C.; Lorenz, Christof
Iran has experienced a drastic increase in water scarcity in the last decades. The main driver has been the substantial unsustainable water consumption of the agricultural sector. This study quantifies the spatiotemporal dynamics of Iran’s hydrometeorological water availability, land cover, and vegetation growth and evaluates their interrelations with a special focus on agricultural vegetation developments. It analyzes globally available reanalysis climate data and satellite time series data and products, allowing a country-wide investigation of recent 20+ years at detailed spatial and temporal scales. The results reveal a wide-spread agricultural expansion (27,000 km 2) and a significant cultivation intensification (48,000 km 2). At the same time, we observe a substantial decline in total water storage that is not represented by a decrease of meteorological water input, confirming an unsustainable use of groundwater mainly for agricultural irrigation. As consequence of water scarcity, we identify agricultural areas with a loss or reduction of vegetation growth (10,000 km 2), especially in irrigated agricultural areas under (hyper-)arid conditions. In Iran’s natural biomes, the results show declining trends in vegetation growth and land cover degradation from sparse vegetation to barren land in 40,000 km 2, mainly along the western plains and foothills of the Zagros Mountains, and at the same time wide-spread greening trends, particularly in regions of higher altitudes. Overall, the findings provide detailed insights in vegetation-related causes and consequences of Iran’s anthropogenic drought and can support sustainable management plans for Iran or other semi-arid regions worldwide, often facing similar conditions.
Open Access
A probabilistic approach to characterizing drought using satellite gravimetry
(2024) Saemian, Peyman; Tourian, Mohammad J.; Elmi, Omid; Sneeuw, Nico; AghaKouchak, Amir
In the recent past, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission and its successor GRACE Follow‐On (GRACE‐FO), have become invaluable tools for characterizing drought through measurements of Total Water Storage Anomaly (TWSA). However, the existing approaches have often overlooked the uncertainties in TWSA that stem from GRACE orbit configuration, background models, and intrinsic data errors. Here we introduce a fresh view on this problem which incorporates the uncertainties in the data: the Probabilistic Storage‐based Drought Index (PSDI). Our method leverages Monte Carlo simulations to yield realistic realizations for the stochastic process of the TWSA time series. These realizations depict a range of plausible drought scenarios that later on are used to characterize drought. This approach provides probability for each drought category instead of selecting a single final category at each epoch. We have compared PSDI with the deterministic approach (Storage‐based Drought Index, SDI) over major global basins. Our results show that the deterministic approach often leans toward an overestimation of storage‐based drought severity. Furthermore, we scrutinize the performance of PSDI across diverse hydrologic events, spanning continents from the United States to Europe, the Middle East, Southern Africa, South America, and Australia. In each case, PSDI emerges as a reliable indicator for characterizing drought conditions, providing a more comprehensive perspective than conventional deterministic indices. In contrast to the common deterministic view, our probabilistic approach provides a more realistic characterization of the TWS drought, making it more suited for adaptive strategies and realistic risk management.
Open Access
Spatio-temporal evaluation of GPM-IMERGV6.0 final run precipitation product in capturing extreme precipitation events across Iran
(2022) Bakhtar, Aydin; Rahmati, Akbar; Shayeghi, Afshin; Teymoori, Javad; Ghajarnia, Navid; Saemian, Peyman
Extreme precipitation events such as floods and droughts have occurred with higher frequency over the recent decades as a result of the climate change and anthropogenic activities. To understand and mitigate such events, it is crucial to investigate their spatio-temporal variations globally or regionally. Global precipitation products provide an alternative way to the in situ observations over such a region. In this study, we have evaluated the performance of the latest version of the Global Precipitation Measurement-Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals (GPM-IMERGV6.0 Final Run (GPM-IMERGF)). To this end, we have employed ten most common extreme precipitation indices, including maximum indices (Rx1day, Rx5day, CDD, and CWD), percentile indices (R95pTOT and R99pTOT), and absolute threshold indices (R10mm, R20mm, SDII, and PRCPTOT). Overall, the spatial distribution results for error metrics showed that the highest and lowest accuracy for GPM-IMERGF were reported for the absolute threshold indices and percentile indices, respectively. Considering the spatial distribution of the results, the highest accuracy of GPM-IMERGF in capturing extreme precipitations was observed over the western highlands, while the worst results were obtained along the Caspian Sea regions. Our analysis can significantly contribute to various hydro-metrological applications for the study region, including identifying drought and flood-prone areas and water resources planning.