Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903
DOI 10.1007/s10040-015-1362-y
PAPER
A quantitative approach for hydrological drought characterization
in southwestern China using GRACE
Nengfang Chao 1 & Zhengtao Wang 1,2 & Weiping Jiang 1,3 & Dingbo Chao 1,2
Received: 14 April 2015 / Accepted: 17 December 2015 / Published online: 9 January 2016
# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Abstract A quantitative approach for hydrological drought
characterization, based on non-seasonal water storage deficit
data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
(GRACE) satellite mission, is assessed. Non-seasonal storage
deficit is the negative terrestrial water storage after deducting
trend, acceleration and seasonal signals, and it is designated as
a drought event when it persists for three or more continuous
months. The non-seasonal water storage deficit is used for
measuring the hydrological drought in southwestern China.
It is found that this storage-deficit method clearly identifies
hydrological drought onset, end and duration, and quantifies
instantaneous severity, peak drought magnitude, and time to
recovery. Moreover, it is found that severe droughts have fre-
quently struck southwestern China in the past several decades,
among which, the drought of 2011–2012 was the most severe;
the duration was 10 months, the severity was −208.92 km3/
month, and the time to recovery was 17 months. These results
compare well with the National Climate Center of China
drought databases, which signifies that the GRACE-based
non-seasonal water storage deficit has a quantitative effect
on hydrological drought characterization and provides an ef-
fective tool for researching droughts.
* Zhengtao Wang
ztwang@whu.edu.cn
1
School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University,
Wuhan 430079, China
2
Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment and Geodesy, Ministry of
Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
3
GNSS Center, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Keywords GRACE . Non-seasonal water storage deficit .
Drought . China . Satellite imagery
Introduction
The characteristics of drought include the following: type,
frequency, duration, degree (maximum peak), severity, and
scope. Various observational materials (for example, meteoro-
logical and hydrological data), along with subjective informa-
tion (including research studies related to drought), are gener-
ally adopted in order to estimate drought severity. All meteo-
rological departments are engaged in the research of drought
characteristics, and are currently attempting to develop more
reliable methods to distinguish droughts. Therefore, signifi-
cant contributions have been made towards the understanding
of the drought development process from the perspectives of
both time and space scales. All of the observations regarding
hydrological data related to hydrological drought, including
snow, surface water, soil temperature, and groundwater, are of
great importance to the accurate description of hydrological
drought characteristics. However, it is still challenging to dis-
tinguish drought events spanning certain time and space
scales.
The region of southwestern China mainly refers to the
provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan (including Chongqing
Municipality) and Guizhou, with a total area of 893,
432 km2, and the research area of this study is 788,842 km2,
as shown in Fig. 1. The wet period in this region is mainly
influenced by the East Asia and Indian Ocean monsoons,
which occur from May to October each year. Most parts of
this region belong to the Yangtze and Pearl River basins.
According to data of the National Bureau of Statistics for the
year 2012, the total population of southwestern China was
191.6 million and the water consumption by industry,
894 Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903

Fig. 1 The study area (red

rectangle) in southwest China.
White circles are towns. Blue Russia
boundaries are provinces. The
color scheme depicts topographic
elevation (green for lowlands, Kazakhstan
brown for highlands) Mongolia

Kyrgyzstan
Beijing
Tajikistan China North
Korea
Afghanistan
Pakistan
India

Nepal Chongqing
Bhutan Study area

Myanmar
Vietnam
Laos

95˚ 100˚ 110˚

105˚
35˚ 35˚

Sichuan province

30˚ Chengdu 30˚

Chongqing

Guizhou province

Guiyang
Yunnan province
25˚ 25˚
Kunming

Myanmar
Vietnam
Laos
20˚ 20˚
95˚ 110˚
100˚ 105˚

agriculture, and the population for domestic purposes was
5.82 billion m3/year (National Bureau of Statistics 2015).
China has suffered many serious droughts in recent
years, particularly in southwestern China. Droughts lead
to severe reduction in crop output, along with other
related social and economic losses. In 2012, Yunnan,
Sichuan and Gansu were hit by severe drought, and as
a result suffered economic losses of approximately 1.1
billion US dollars. Some drought elements can be mon-
itored, including precipitation and water storage, by uti-
lizing surface observation materials. However, it is dif-
ficult to monitor changes in terrestrial water storage due
to the limited and uneven distribution of the observation
stations.
Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903
Local and global observation data can be obtained using
satellite remote sensing technology. Therefore, this technolo-
gy has become an effective tool for research regarding drought
characteristics. However, many satellite remote sensing tech-
nologies designed for the research of drought characteristics
do not include the hydrological elements, and they cannot
provide the observation value of water loss during the drought
periods (Chen et al. 2009a; Houborg et al. 2012; Yirdaw et al.
2008).
Satellite gravity measurements provide a new method for
the quantification of hydrological changes, including drought
and flood. The GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment) satellite, due to its high precision with respect
to measurement equipment and observation data, covers al-
most the entire globe, and it provides a long-term effective
method to monitor terrestrial water storage changes. Thus, it
is widely utilized for the research of global and regional ter-
restrial water storage.
The GRACE satellite provides data on the changes of
monthly water storage (Tapley et al. 2004), including surface
and groundwater balances, and so on. Due to its continuous
hydrological signals, the GRACE satellite has been success-
fully utilized in the observation of changes in the water storage
of large watersheds (Seo et al. 2006), insufficient regional
water storage due to climate changes (Chen et al. 2010;
Wang et al. 2012) or human factors (Rodell et al. 2009;
Lenk 2013; Voss et al. 2013), large-scale seasonal or non-
seasonal signals (Yirdaw et al. 2008; Morishita and Heki
2008), and changes to groundwater (Rodell et al. 2009;
Tiwari et al. 2009), freshwater flow (Syed et al. 2007), and
glacial ablation (Velicogna 2009), as well as research of re-
gional flooding (Reager and Famiglietti 2009). The research
studies of Famiglietti and Rodell (2013) indicated that the
GRACE satellite has the potential for use in future water re-
source management, including droughts.
So far, research (Yirdaw et al. 2008; Chen et al. 2009a;
Leblanc et al. 2009; Frappart et al. 2012; Long et al. 2013)
has been conducted regarding individual regional droughts
using the GRACE satellite data on water storage change.
However, these studies did not place GRACE observations
into a consistent, globally applicable drought characterization
framework for quantifying drought severity in terms of the
water absent from a region.
This research study further quantifies the hydrological
drought events based on non-seasonal water storage def-
icit from GRACE. This paper discusses the duration of
the hydrological droughts (cycle of insufficient water
reserve), and uses it as a new index for characterizing
droughts, in order to obtain the drought characteristics,
including drought area, duration, severity, and recovery
time. The research results of this study are of a certain
practical significance for the hydrological drought mon-
itoring in southwestern China.
895
Data and method
Mass change in terms of equivalent water thickness
from GRACE
The GRACE satellite dataset adopted by this study comes
from the RL05 time-variable gravity field model provided
by CSR (Center for Space Research, Texas, USA), which
includes a total period of 136 months, from April 2002 to
June 2014. The gravity field could not be resolved in the case
of the GRACE satellite resonance (Wagner et al. 2006), and it
therefore led to loss data (6/2002, 7/2002, 6/2003, 1/2011,
6/2011, 5/2012, 10/2012, 3/2013, 8/2013, 9/2013, 2/2014).
The GRACE monthly time-variable gravity field model is a


spherical harmonic coefficient C lm ; S lm of the completely
normalized external earth gravity field (Heiskanen and
Moritz 1967), with 60 orders in total; l is the degree of spher-
ical harmonic coefficient, and m is the order spherical harmon-
ic coefficient.
The insensitivity of the geometrical shape of the GRACE
satellite’s orbit to C20 C20 (or J2, the second order of spherical
harmonic coefficient) led to low precision. Therefore, in this
research study, the second-order term of the GRACE time-
variable gravity field model was replaced with the determined
with satellite laser ranging (SLR) observation data (Cheng
et al. 2011).
To determine the deviation of the global surface mass
changes, all of the spherical harmonic coefficient information
of the earth gravity potential model are required. However, the
origin of the GRACE satellite reference frame was in the earth
mass center, and the first-order term of the time-variable grav-
ity potential model was zero. It was necessary to consider the
influences of the geocenter motions, in order to more accu-
rately obtain the mass-change information. This study added
the geocenter coordinates obtained, based on the SLR obser-
vation data, in order to calculate the first-order term coefficient
(Wu et al. 2012). The monthly time-variable gravity field
changes were expressed with the residual spherical harmonic
coefficients. Equation (1) is as follows:
mean
ΔC lm ðt Þ ¼ C lm ðt Þ−C lm
mean ð1Þ
ΔS lm ðt Þ ¼ S lm ðt Þ−S lm
mean mean
In which, C lm and S lm are the average values of the
time-series spherical harmonic coefficient.
There were three main errors which occurred during the
determination of the terrestrial water storage changes using
the GRACE satellite time-variable gravity field model: (1)
data processing errors (GRACE measurement errors and mod-
el errors in eliminating other geophysical signals); (2) post-
processing errors (e.g. errors arising from spatial smoothing to
eliminate the south-north strip errors and high-frequency
896 Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903

noises, as well as signal leakage errors arising from the influ-
ences of the signals coming out of the research area); and (3)
gravity signal errors (e.g. the internal mass changes of the
earth that were not modeled).
Due to the influences of other geophysical signals,
and the non-modeled influences in the spherical har-
monic coefficient during the data processing, it was
quite difficult to correct the first-type of error. Also,
the south–north strip errors were caused by the limita-
tion of the GRACE satellite’s time-space resolution.
Previous research studies have put forward many differ-
ent smoothing methods to reduce these errors (second-
type errors) which inhibited high-frequency signals, re-
duced signal amplitude, and had significant influences
on the global surface mass changes monitored with the
GRACE satellite. The post-processing errors are caused
by the band limitations of the spherical harmonic coef-
ficient (50/60 orders with a corresponding spatial reso-
lution of 350–400 km), and the influences of the local
regions (signal leakage errors). The corrections of the
third-type errors remain quite uncertain. For example,
the glacial balance adjustment is a response to the sur-
face load changes from the solid earth to ice and water,
including glacial action and recession. A glacial isostatic
adjustment (GIA) model is based on the predicted ice
loading history and mantle viscosity, and therefore has
poor reliability.
In this study, the following technologies to correct the
preceding errors were adopted: (1) decorrelation (P5M8)
and fan filtering (Zhang et al. 2009), (2) a new method
by Landerer and Swenson (2012) to correct truncation,
signal leakage, and signal attenuation errors due to filter-
ing, and (3) the neglecting of the GIA correction; the
latter being due to the fact that, at present, the existing
GIA model and its correction are still quite uncertain. The
GIA model is based on the predicted ice loading history
and mantle viscosity, and therefore has poor reliability.
Since its influences in the research area were negligible
(Velicogna 2009), this research study neglected the GIA
correction.
The time-variable gravity signals reflect the global surface
mass transfer (Chao 2005), and directly convert to the global
surface mass change. The surface mass change can normally
be expressed with an equivalent water thickness (EWT), and
is represented with the spherical harmonic coefficient as fol-
lows (Wahr et al. 1998; Chao 2005):

aρave X 2l þ 1 X
L l h  i
Δhðλ; φ; t i Þ ¼ Wl Plm ðsinφÞ W m ΔC lm ðt i Þcosmλ þ ΔS lm ðt i Þsinmλ ð2Þ
3ρw l¼0 1 þ k l m¼0

where λ is the geocenter longitude; φ is the geocenter latitude;
a is the semi-major axis of the reference ellipsoid;
ti(i = 1, 2, ⋯, 136) is the time from April 2002 to June 2014; L
is the highest order; ρave is the average earth density,
5,517 kg/m3; ρw is the water density, 1,000 kg/m3; kl is the
Love number (Farrell 1972); Plm is the completely normalized
Legendre association function (e.g., Heiskanen and Moritz
1967); and Wl and Wm are the smoothing coefficients of the
Gaussian filter (Wahr et al. 1998; Jekeli 1981) for the orders
of the fan filtering (Zhang et al. 2009).
GLDAS
The Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) con-
strains land surface states through the observation data of the

Fig. 2 GRACE-observed water 30

storage anomalies in
southwestern China 20
Water storage change (cm)

10

−10

CSR GFZ
−20
JPL GRGS
WHU MEAN

−30
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year
Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903 897

Fig. 3 The non-seasonal 20

CSR GFZ
hydrological drought signals from JPL GRGS
WHU MEAN
GRACE

Water storage change (cm)

10

−10

−20
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year

new-generation NASA (National Aeronautical and Spatial
Administration) surface and space observation system (Rodell
et al. 2004). GLDAS produces optimal fields of land surface
states and fluxes in near-real time by combining satellite and
ground-based observations into four land surface models:
CLM (the Community Land Model), Mosaic (MOS), VIC (the
variable infiltration capacity) and NOAH (model of the National
Centers for Environmental Prediction, Oregon State University/
Air Force/Hydrologic Research Laboratory). The GLDAS pro-
vides the land surface model with a space resolution of 1° × 1°
and 0.25° × 0.25°, and a time resolution of 1 month and 3 h. The
monthly NOAH soil moisture states, in a 1 × 1 grid, are used to
estimate the water storage in the top 2-m soil layer along with the
NOAH snowfield on the surface within the southwest region.
This study obtained the 1° × 1° grid value of NOAH in the
southwest region with bilinear interpolation, which was consis-
tent with the spatial distribution of the water storage changes
obtained by the GRACE satellite.
TRMM
The TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) satellite is
an experimental satellite jointly researched and developed by
NASA in the USA and NASDA (National Space Development
Agency) in Japan, which was successfully launched on Nov 27,
1997 (Huffman et al. 2009). The TRMM can provide 50°S to
50°N global precipitation data. This study adopted the level-3
monthly precipitation data product of TRMM, V7 3B43, with
the space resolution of 0.25° × 0.25°, and obtained 1° × 1° grid
values in the TRMM southwest region with bilinear interpola-
tion, which was consistent with the spatial distribution of the
water storage changes obtained by the GRACE satellite.
Extraction of the signal of hydrological drought
The terrestrial water-storage-change signals obtained, based
on the GRACE satellite data, included the seasonal signals
(annual and semi-annual), tidal alias (cycle: 161 days), tidal
alias (cycle: 3.73 years; Chen et al. 2009a, b), and trend and
acceleration signals (Ogawa et al. 2011), which can be
expressed with the following function model:
Δhðt i Þ ¼ a0 þ a1 ðt i −t 0 Þ þ a2 ðt i −t 0 Þ2 þ
X
4
X 4
ð3Þ
Ak cosð2π f k t i Þ þ Bk sinð2π f k t i Þ
k¼1 k¼1
where Δh ðt i Þ is the water storage change in the whole study
area at time ti from Eq. (2); f1, f2, f3, f4 are the signal frequency

Fig. 4 The non-seasonal 4

WHU GLDAS
Normalized water storage change (cm)

hydrological drought signals from

WHU and GLDAS. (In Figs. 4, 5,
6, and 7, the gray-shaded areas 2
depict water storage deficits over
3 months)

−4
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year
898 Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903

of annual, semi-annual, S2 tidal alias, and K2 tidal alias, re- method, and made a series of post-processing steps (see section
spectively; Ak and Bk (k = 1, 2, 3, 4) are the signal amplitudes ‘Mass change in terms of equivalent water thickness from
(unknown); a1 is the trend value; and a2 is the acceleration. GRACE’). The water-storage-change calculation results of this
The t0 value in this study was the middle moment of the study (WHU: WuHan University, see Fig. 2) are quite close to
calculation cycle. the MEAN results. Figure 3 shows the non-seasonal hydrological
Here, the unknown parameters (a0 , a1 , a2 ; A 1 , A 2, A 3 , drought signals obtained based on Eq. (3).
A4; B1, B2, B3, B4) were estimated from the time series of the
terrestrial water storage changes by the nonlinear least square
Table 1 Hydrological drought events (Jan 2003–Dec 2013), for which
method. In order to extract the hydrological drought signals
the non-seasonal signal was negative for more than 3 months
from these mass changes, the annual, semi-annual, S2 tidal
alias, K2 tidal alias, trend and acceleration signal components Data Period of event Drought
by the time series of the terrestrial water storage changes were duration (months)
removed (Koji and Kosuke 2010), which were collectively GRACE Oct 2003–Mar 2004 6
called the non-seasonal hydrological drought signals.
Jun 2005–Oct 2005 5
Moreover, the same steps were implemented for different data
Dec 2005–Feb 2006 3
sets, which included the GLDAS, TRMM and groundwater
Aug 2006–Jan 2007 6
data, to extract the non-seasonal hydrological drought signals.
Sep 2009–Mar 2010 7
Jul 2011–Apr 2012 10
Apr 2013–Jun 2013 3
Numerical analysis
GLDAS Aug 2003–Mar 2004 8
Jul 2005–Nov 2005 5
GRACE-based estimates of total terrestrial water storage
Jul 2006–Jul 2007 13
anomalies (includes snow, surface water, soil moisture and
Nov 2009–Jun 2010 8
groundwater) have provided much insight for the field of hy-
Jul 2011–Apr 2012 10
drology in revealing large-scale groundwater depletion and
Dec 2012–Feb 2013 3
droughts, but the hydrology specific missions cannot provide
Apr 2013–Jul 2013 4
comprehensive observations. Moreover, one needs not only
precipitation but also comprehensive observations that can GROUND Jan 2003–Aug 2003 8
only be provided by GRACE, if hydrological drought charac- Jul 2004–Sep 2006 3
terization is to be correctly quantified. Here, it is possible to Dec 2005–Mar 2006 4
quantify the hydrological characterization by GRACE obser- Oct 2007–Aug 2008 11
vations, and by GLDAS, TRMM, GWS (groundwater from May 2009–Oct 2010 6
Eq. 4) and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PSDI), which Aug 2010–Jul 2011 10
were used to verify the correctness of GRACE. TRMM Feb 2003–May 2003 4
Sep 2003–Nov 2003 3
Terrestrial water storage change Oct 2004–Feb 2005 5
Jun 2006–Sep 2006 4
The time series of terrestrial water storage changes recorded Dec 2008–Mar 2009 4
by the CSR (Center for Space Research), the GFZ Sep 2009–Feb 2010 4
(GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam), and the JPL (Jet Apr 2011–Sep 2011 6
Propulsion Laboratory) in southwestern China, from April Feb 2012–May 2012 4
2002 to June 2014, obtained through the GRGS (Groupe de Oct 2012–Feb 2013 5
Recherche Geodesie Spatiale), were used in this study. The PDSI Feb 2003–Apr 2003 3
MEAN (see Fig. 2) refers to the average water storage change Nov 2003–Jan 2004 3
of the four results derived from CSR, GFZ, JPL and GRGS. The Apr 2004–May 2005 8
preceding calculation adopted DDK5 filtering (Kusche et al. Aug 2005–Jul 2006 12
2009) to introduce the error covariance matrix and the prior Oct 2006–Jan 2007 4
signal covariance matrix of the GRACE satellite’s monthly grav- Feb 2009–Apr 2009 3
ity field solutions into the design of the optimal filter. Different Dec 2009–Mar 2010 5
smoothing parameters were selected to obtain the three different May 2010–Dec 2010 8
decorrelation filtering methods, namely DDK1, DDK2, and Feb 2011–May 2011 4
DDK3. The latest RL05 data involve several new filtering Oct 2011–Dec 2012 15
methods, DDK4–DDK8. This study then adopted a fan filtering
Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903 899

Normalized groundwater height change (cm)

Fig. 5 The non-seasonal 4
hydrological drought signals from
GROUND index
2

−2

−4
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year

The gravity field results are equally sensitive to water at all signals, this study defined the negative non-seasonal water
depths: surface water, soil moisture, and groundwater, and storage changes as the water storage deficit M (M = Δh × s
include anthropogenic effects. To isolate the anthropogenic [km3]; s is the area of drought under research). The water
contributions it is necessary to remove monthly water storage storage deficit refers to the total volume of the water shortage
estimates from land surface models—version 4.0 of the which can be directly observed. A water storage deficit over
Community Land Model (CLM), maintained by the three continuous months constituted a hydrological drought
National Center for Atmospheric Research (Oleson et al. Bevent^, as illustrated by the gray areas in Fig. 4 and summa-
2008), which included groundwater changes. Thus, the rized in Table 1.
groundwater changes excluding the anthropogenic effects Based on the preceding definitions, this study also calcu-
could be obtained based on the water balance method lated the non-seasonal water storage deficit derived from the
(Tiwari et al. 2009 and Joodaki et al. 2014): GLDAS (Fig. 4), and then further obtained the non-seasonal
water storage deficit of groundwater derived from Eq. (4)
dGWS dTWS dSWS dAnthropogenic
¼ − − ð4Þ (Fig. 5), in order to verify the GRACE satellite results. The
dt dt dt dt non-seasonal water storage deficit of TRMM abnormal pre-
In which GWS is groundwater height; d GWS/dt is the cipitation (Fig. 6) was obtained, for the purpose of researching
GROUND index; TWS is the total terrestrial water storage the relationship between the drought and the precipitation.
from GRACE; and SWS is the soil moisture from NOAH The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI; Dai et al. 2004)
which did not include groundwater changes. is a frequently used drought index, and is widely utilized in
such fields as hydrology, weather, agriculture, and so on. The
PDSI data (Dai 2011) are shown in Fig. 7.In order to compare
Water storage deficit droughts in different regions and among different types (e.g.,
severity, duration, and extent), and to characterize the
With the aim of distinguishing the traditional hydrological droughts, the indexes (e.g., GRACE, GLDAS, TRMM,
stations data, as well as reducing the influences of the seasonal GROUND and PSDI) were normalized. According to
Normalized TRMM Precipitation Anomaly (mm)

Fig. 6 The non-seasonal

hydrological drought signals for
the TRMM precipitation anomaly 4

−2

−4

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

200 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year
900 Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903

Fig. 7 The non-seasonal 3

hydrological drought signals from
the Palmer Drought Severity 2
Index (PDSI)

Normalized PDSI
1

−1

−2

−3
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year

Table 1 and Figs. 4, 5, 6, and 7, the drought information in
southwestern China obtained by the GRACE, GLDAS,
GROUND, TRMM, and PSDI data are basically consis-
tent, while still some differences exist as follows: (1)
southwestern China had been hit by many droughts in
the past 10 years, especially severe droughts during 2009
to 2012; (2) the hydrological drought events obtained by
GRACE and GLDAS were basically consistent; and (3)
the GROUND index was from Eq. (4). The results indi-
cated that southwestern China suffered a hydrological
drought lasting 11 months from October 2007 to August
2008, and a hydrological drought lasting 10 months from
August 2010 to July 2011, which were basically consistent
with the actual monitoring results; (4) TRMM showed that
the droughts in southwestern China were always accompa-
nied with negative abnormal precipitation; and (5) the
PDSI value was smaller than zero for the continuous
15 months from October, 2011 to December, 2012.
However, there were no long-term droughts between the
end of 2011 and the end of 2012 in southwestern China.
The different methods and resulting data by the afore-
mentioned indexes caused inconsistent drought characteris-
tics, but the result of the non-seasonal water-storage-deficit
index from GRACE compares well with the actual moni-
toring results and the National Climate Center of China
drought databases, so it can be a new effective tool to
research drought.
In order to comprehensively consider the water storage
deficit and duration, the severity, S(t) (km3 months), of each
month within a hydrological drought event was defined based
on the insufficient GRACE satellite non-seasonal water re-
serve data, as shown in Fig. 8.
S ðt Þ ¼ M ðt Þ  Dðt Þ ð5Þ
In which M ðt Þ is the average value of the water
storage deficit of the hydrological drought events; and
D(t) is the duration. When S, M , P (the maximum water
storage deficit) and D are determined, the hydrological
drought events can be quantified, and the insufficient
water reserve M can be used as the ‘instantaneous ob-
servation value’ (e.g. instantaneous water storage defi-
cit), as shown in Table 2.

Table 2 The characterization of

hydrological drought (all events Period of event Peak water Drought Mean total water Severity of drought, S
were 8 months) storage deficit duration storage deficit (km3/month)
3 3
(km ) (months) (km )

Sep 2002–Nov 2002 −18.723 3 −10.641 −31.923

Oct 2003–Mar 2004 −21.591 6 −12.275 −73.653
Jun 2005–Oct 2005 −18.235 5 −7.812 −39.063
Dec 2005–Feb 2006 −27.342 3 −17.612 −52.836
Aug 2006–Jan 2007 −33.663 6 −17.398 −104.389
Sep 2009–Mar 2010 −24.458 7 −16.367 −114.573
Jul 2011–Apr 2012 −50.177 10 −20.892 −208.920
Apr 2013–Jul 2013 −28.712 3 −8.946 −26.838
Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903 901

Fig. 8 Instantaneous severity for 0

GRACE-observed, regional
average water storage deficits −50

Instantaneous Severit
[km3/month]
−100

−150

−200

−250

−300
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year

Using non-seasonal water storage deficit to estimate The statistical percentage of dM/dt empirical cumulative
drought recovery distribution was calculated according to the standard normal
distribution of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. In this study,
The monthly water storage deficit (M) can be used to quantify 95 % eCDF (2 standard deviations) was defined as the max-
the water shortages under normal circumstances, and calculate imum positive change rate of the water storage deficit, and
the time derivative (dM/dt) of the water storage deficit through 68 % (1 standard deviation) was defined as the positive aver-
backward difference, as well as obtain the changes of the age change rate of the water storage deficit (Thomas et al.
water storage deficit with time, including the increase and 2014).
decrease rates. The quotient of a monthly deficit value (M), and either the
maximum or average rate of change, yields the minimum or
dM M ðt i Þ−M ðt i−1 Þ average time to recovery, allowing one to assign a likely time
ðt i Þ ¼ ; i ¼ 1; ⋯; N ð6Þ
dt t i −t i−1 range for recovery for every month through to the end of the
event. Based on the 95th (10 km3/month) and 68th (3 km3/
where t is time and N is the length of the time series. month) percentiles of the eCDF (Fig. 9b), the likely minimum

Fig. 9 a Monthly rate of change 60

of deficits (dM/dt) [km3/month];
b the minimum and average times 40
to hydrological drought recovery
20
dM/dt

−20

−40

−60
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year
20
AVERAGE Time to Recovery
Time to Recovery (months)

MINIMUM Time to Recovery

15

10

0
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year
902
and average times to recovery from the September 2011 def-
icit (50 km3) are ~5 and ~17 months, respectively (Fig. 9b).
Conclusions
The drought characteristics of the study area in south-
western China were quantified based on the non-
seasonal water storage deficit of the GRACE satellite
data, and contributions in terms of five aspects of re-
search on drought characteristics were made as follows:
(1) the occurrence time and duration; (2) the volume of
water shortage during the drought; (3) the quantified
severity; (4) the recovery time; and (5) the applicability
of the method. This method was found to be applicable
to the research of global drought characteristics.
The non-seasonal water storage deficit was utilized
for quantification of the drought characteristics in south-
western China. The related research indicated that
southwestern China experienced severe droughts during
the time period from 2003 to 2007, and again from
2009 to 2012. In particular, the drought occurring dur-
ing 2011 to 2012 was the longest (10 months), with a
water-shortage severity reaching −208.92 km3/month,
and a recovery time lasting 17 months. The water-
shortage severity index was basically consistent with
the monitoring results of the National Climate Centre
of China (2015). By combining the GRACE, GLDAS
and CLM data, and based on the water balance method,
the results showed that the groundwater and total water
storage in this region were insufficiently balanced. The
TRMM precipitation materials indicated that the
droughts were always accompanied by negative abnor-
mal precipitation, and that the droughts were closely
related to precipitation.
The research results of this study indicate that the
GRACE satellite has the ability to detect the terrestrial
water storage changes in southwestern China which are
caused by drought events. Also, the non-seasonal water
storage deficit can further quantify the drought charac-
teristics, and thereby provide a useful new tool for the
research of hydrological drought events. With the accu-
mulation of the satellite gravity data, along with the
hydrological/meteorological data and the constant im-
provements being made to the hydrological models,
the geophysical signals in the satellite gravity observa-
tion results can now be separated and extracted. This
not only provides reliable geophysical information for
the research of solid earth mass transport and the refine-
ment and verification of the local and global hydrolog-
ical models, but also assists in the prediction of major
disaster events, including drought, flood, debris flow,
earthquakes, and so on.
Hydrogeol J (2016) 24:893–903
Acknowledgements We are grateful to CSR (UT) and GRGS, GSFC
(NASA), and JAXA for providing the GRACE, GLDAS and TRMM
data respectively. This research was supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (NSFC; Grant Nos. 41274032, 41474018),
National 973 Project China (Grant Nos. 2013CB733301,
2013CB733302), and Basic Research Foundation 14-02-04 of the Key
Laboratory of Geospace Environment and Geodesy of Ministry of Edu-
cation, Wuhan University.
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