Hydrologic Mass Changes and Their Implications in Mediterranean-Climate Turkey from GRACE Measurements

Abstract

Water is arguably our most precious resource, which is related to the hydrological cycle, climate change, regional drought events, and water resource management. In Turkey, besides traditional hydrological studies, Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) is poorly investigated at a continental scale, with limited and sparse observations. Moreover, TWS is a key parameter for studying drought events through the analysis of its variation. In this paper, TWS variation, and thus drought analysis, spatial mass distribution, long-term mass change, and impact on TWS variation from the parameter scale (e.g., precipitation, rainfall rate, evapotranspiration, soil moisture) to the climatic change perspective are investigated. GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) Level 3 (Release05-RL05) monthly land mass data of the Centre for Space Research (CSR) processing center covering the period from April 2002 to January 2016, Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS: Mosaic (MOS), NOAH, Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC)), and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM-3B43) models and drought indices such as self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity (SCPDSI), El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are used for this purpose. Turkey experienced serious drought events interpreted with a significant decrease in the TWS signal during the studied time period. GRACE can help to better predict the possible drought nine months before in terms of a decreasing trend compared to previous studies, which do not take satellite gravity data into account. Moreover, the GRACE signal is more sensitive to agricultural and hydrological drought compared to meteorological drought. Precipitation is an important parameter affecting the spatial pattern of the mass distribution and also the spatial change by inducing an acceleration signal from the eastern side to the western side. In Turkey, the La Nina effect probably has an important role in the meteorological drought turning into agricultural and hydrological drought.