Gravimetry-based water storage shifting over the China-India border area controlled by regional climate variability

Kwok Pan Chun; Qing He; Hok Sum Fok; Subimal Ghosh; Omer Yetemen; Qiang Chen; Ana Mijic

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136360

Gravimetry-based water storage shifting over the China-India border area controlled by regional climate variability

Sci Total Environ. 2020 Apr 20:714:136360. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136360. Epub 2019 Dec 30.

Authors

Kwok Pan Chun¹, Qing He², Hok Sum Fok³, Subimal Ghosh⁴, Omer Yetemen⁵, Qiang Chen⁶, Ana Mijic⁷

Affiliations

¹ Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. Electronic address: kpchun@hkbu.edu.hk.
² Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China.
³ School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China.
⁴ Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India.
⁵ Civil, Surveying, and Environmental Engineering, The University of Newcastle, Australia; Eurasia Institute of Earth Sciences, Istanbul Technical University, Maslak 34469, Istanbul, Turkey.
⁶ Geophysics Laboratory, Faculty of Science, Technology and Communication, University of Luxembourg, 2, avenue de l'Université, L-4365 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
⁷ Imperial College London, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, London SW7 2AZ, UK.

PMID: 31982733
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136360

Abstract

The regional water storage shifting causes nonstationary spatial distribution of droughts and flooding, leading to water management challenges, environmental degradation and economic losses. The regional water storage shifting is becoming evident due to the increasing climate variability. However, the previous studies for climate drivers behind the water storage shifting are not rigorously quantified. In this study, the terrestrial water storage (TWS) spatial shifting pattern during 2002-2017 over the China-India border area (CIBA) is developed using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), suggesting that the Indus-Ganges-Brahmaputra basin (IGBB) was wetting while the central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) was drying. Similar drying and wetting patterns were also found in the precipitation, snow depth, Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and potential evaporation data. Based on our newly proposed Indian monsoon (IM) and western North Pacific monsoon (WNPM) variation indices, the water shifting pattern over the CIBA was found to be affected by the weakening of the variation of IM and WNPM through modulating the regional atmospheric circulation. The weakening of IM and WNPM variations has shown to be attributed to the decreasing temperature gradient between the CIBA and the Indian Ocean, and possibly related to increasing regional temperatures associated with the increasing global temperature. As the global warming intensifies, it is expected that the regional TWS shifting pattern over the CIBA will be further exaggerated, stressing the need of advancing water resources management for local communities in the region.

Keywords: China-India border area; Climate variability; Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment; Water storage shifting.