Hydrological drought evaluation using GRACE satellite-based drought index over the lake basins, East Africa

Ayalkibet Mekonnen Seka; Jiahua Zhang; Da Zhang; Elias Gebeyehu Ayele; Jiaqi Han; Foyez Ahmed Prodhan; Guoping Zhang; Qi Liu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158425

Hydrological drought evaluation using GRACE satellite-based drought index over the lake basins, East Africa

Sci Total Environ. 2022 Dec 15:852:158425. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158425. Epub 2022 Sep 5.

Authors

Ayalkibet Mekonnen Seka¹, Jiahua Zhang², Da Zhang³, Elias Gebeyehu Ayele⁴, Jiaqi Han⁵, Foyez Ahmed Prodhan⁶, Guoping Zhang⁷, Qi Liu⁸

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, Beijing 100094, China; Arba Minch Water Technology Institute, Water Resources Research Center (AWTi), Arba Minch University, Ethiopia.
² Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, Beijing 100094, China. Electronic address: zhangjh@radi.ac.cn.
³ Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁴ Arba Minch Water Technology Institute, Water Resources Research Center (AWTi), Arba Minch University, Ethiopia.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100094, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, Beijing 100094, China.
⁶ Department of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur 1706, Bangladesh.
⁷ Public Meteorological Service Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China. Electronic address: zhanggp@cma.gov.cn.
⁸ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.

PMID: 36063925
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158425

Abstract

Hydrological drought, a regular phenomenon that could heavily impact natural systems and human life, is aggravated by a water storage deficit. While Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite databased drought monitoring has been widely studied in East Africa (EA), drought recovery time and anthropogenic factors are still missing, which are prerequisite for drought management. Here, a water storage deficit index (WSDI) and modified WSDI are utilized for analyzing a holistic representation of drought. The results show that the drought events in recent times are well-identified and estimated using this approach over five lake basins in EA from 2002 to 2021. Although, the basin scale drought events are evaluated using the Pearson correlation coefficient (r) from 2002 to 2021. The results showed a significant correlation between WSDI, MWSDI, and the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI) in all lake basins except in the Tana basin. We show that the presence of anthropogenic forcing has increased the highest peak deficits of -2.57, -3.25, -19.05, -87.2, and -99 km³ over the Tana, Abaya-Chamo, Turkana, Victoria, and Tanganyika basins, respectively. The longest deficit period of 36 months and the highest severity value of -1140 were observed in the Turkana and Victoria basins. The average drought recovery time ranges from 2.4 to 11.2 months and from 1.4 to 12.6 months as obtained by WSDI and MWSDI, respectively. Our findings highlight the importance of the calculated WSD approach to evaluating the hydrological drought characterization and estimate the drought condition at the basin scale.

Keywords: Drought recovery time; GRACE data; Hydrological drought; Modified WSDI; Water storage deficit.

MeSH terms

Droughts*
Humans
Hydrology
Lakes*
Tanzania
Water

Substances

Water