A Framework for Characterization of Drought Events at the Basin Scale Based on High-Resolution Terrestrial Water Storage Reconstruction

Terrestrial water storage anomaly (TWSA) data derived from gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) satellite measurements are constrained by their coarse spatial resolution (∼3°) and limited temporal coverage (since 2002), which reduce their applicability for identifying drought events at the basin scale (<90 000 km2) and analyzing long-term drought evolution. In this study, we propose a modeling framework that accounts for the irregular temporal intervals of GRACE data to reconstruct TWSA data from 1961 to 2022 at a 0.25°grid resolution for the construction of a high-resolution drought severity index (HRDSI) to assess drought processes at the watershed scale. Application in the Pearl River basin (PRB) of China shows that the HRDSI not only effectively captures the evolution of major drought events but also evaluates the trend of drought characteristics under climate change. Since 2002, the severity of droughts in the PRB has not significantly increased compared to the two previous periods (1961–1981 and 1982–2001), with average drought severity indices of −1.54, −1.48, and −1.52, respectively. However, drought events have become more frequent, occurring four, four, and eight times during the three periods, respectively. In addition, drought recovery periods have become longer, with average recovery rates of 0.75, 0.71, and 0.66 cm/month. Although the HRDSI is similar to the Palmer Drought Severity Index, it offers potential advantages in identifying short-term droughts and those influenced by high-intensity human activities. The TWSA reconstruction method proposed in this study is also applicable for drought assessment in other watersheds.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing

• Publication date

  Unknown publication date

• Fields of study

  Computer Science, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1109/JSTARS.2025.3600026
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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