Prakash, Satya and Gairola, RM and Papa, F and Mitra, AK (2014) An assessment of terrestrial water storage, rainfall and river discharge over Northern India from satellite data. In: CURRENT SCIENCE, 107 (9). pp. 1582-1586.
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Abstract
Terrestrial water storage (TWS) plays a key role in the global water cycle and is highly influenced by climate variability and human activities. In this study, monthly TWS, rainfall and Ganga-Brahmaputra river discharge (GBRD) are analysed over India for the period of 2003-12 using remote sensing satellite data. The spatial pattern of mean TWS shows a decrease over a large and populous region of Northern India comprising the foothills of the Himalayas, the Indo-Gangetic Plains and North East India. Over this region, the mean monthly TWS exhibits a pronounced seasonal cycle and a large interannual variability, highly correlated with rainfall and GBRD variations (r > 0.8) with a lag time of 2 months and 1 month respectively. The time series of monthly TWS shows a consistent and statistically significant decrease of about 1 cm year(-1) over Northern India, which is not associated with changes in rainfall and GBRD. This recent change in TWS suggests a possible impact of rapid industrialization, urbanization and increase in population on land water resources. Our analysis highlights the potential of the Earth-observation satellite data for hydrological applications.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | CURRENT SCIENCE |
| Publisher: | INDIAN ACAD SCIENCES |
| Additional Information: | Copyright for this article belongs to the INDIAN ACAD SCIENCES, C V RAMAN AVENUE, SADASHIVANAGAR, P B #8005, BANGALORE 560 080, INDIA |
| Keywords: | Earth-observation satellites; rainfall; river discharge; terrestrial water storage |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Mechanical Sciences > Divecha Centre for Climate Change |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Dec 2014 04:50 |
| Last Modified: | 06 Nov 2018 07:10 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/50525 |
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