Inland water storage change is a fundamental part of the hydrologic cycle, which reflects the impact of climate change and anthropogenic activities on water resources. In this study, we used multisatellite data (from satellite altimetry, remote sensing, and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)) to investigate water storage changes in the Aral Sea and its endorheic basin. The water storage depletion rate in the Aral Sea from calibrated hypsometric curves (CHCs) created by satellite altimetry and image data agrees with the GRACE-derived result using the Slepian space domain inverse method (SSDIM). Compared with the combined filtering method (CFM) and mascon solutions, the SSDIM was shown to be an effective method of reducing the GRACE leakage error and restoring the signal attenuation in the Aral Sea. Moreover, we used the WaterGAP global hydrology model (WGHM) to qualitatively analyze the variations in the water storage components. The results show that the groundwater in the Aral Sea affects the change in the interannual water storage, especially during the extreme dry and humid periods. However, from the long-term water storage trend, the decrease in the surface storage dominates the shrinking of the Aral Sea. In addition, more details of the water storage change pattern in the endorheic basin were revealed by the enhanced GRACE solution. Our findings accentuate the severe water storage states of the Aral Sea endorheic basin under the impact of climate change and human interventions.
There are about 27,000 glaciers in Alaska (Mcgrath et al., 2017;Pfeffer et al., 2014). The glaciers here began to retreat as early as the 18th century, and some small glaciers have disappeared in the 20th century (Molnia, 2008). Recent studies show that in the past half century, the rapidly melting glaciers in Alaska have contributed to a third of the global sea level rise (Zemp et al., 2019). This ice loss has been accelerating in the last decade (Hugonnet et al., 2021;Jakob et al., 2020). Mass losses associated with Alaska glacier melting have been detected by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data. Luthcke et al. (2008Luthcke et al. ( , 2013 first used GRACE mascon solutions to confirm significant mass losses in Alaska, similar to the results from the solutions using spherical harmonic expansions (Gardner et al., 2013;Jacob et al., 2012;Wouters et al., 2019). The latest time-varying gravity observations of GRACE and GRACE Follow-On show that the glacier-induced mass losses are intensifying
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