Satellites show 'total' California water storage at near-decade low

A press release from the University of California Center for Hydrological Modeling: Updates to satellite data show that California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin River basins are at near decade-low water storage levels.  These and other findings on the State’s dwindling water resources were documented in an advisory report released today from the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling (UCCHM) at the University of California, Irvine.

Responding to Governor Jerry Brown’s recent declaration of a drought emergency in California, a team of UCCHM researchers has updated its research on the state’s two largest river basins, and the source of most its water. The region also encompasses the Central Valley, the most productive agriculture region in the country. The Central Valley depends entirely on the surface and groundwater resources within the river basins to meet its irrigation needs and to produce food for the nation.

Using satellite data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, the
researchers, led by UCCHM Director and UC Irvine Professor Jay Famiglietti, found that as of November 2013, total water storage in the river basins -- the combination of all of the snow, surface water, soil moisture and groundwater, and an integrated measure of basin-wide water availability -- had declined to its lowest point in nearly a decade.  GRACE data for the record-dry 2013-2014 winter months were not yet available for analysis.

The data show particularly steep water losses between November 2011 and November 2013, the early phase of the current drought.  Famiglietti and fellow UCCHM researchers estimate that the basins have already lost 10 cubic kilometers of fresh water in each of the last two years -- equivalent to virtually all of California’s urban and household water use each year.  "That’s the steepest decline in total water storage that we’ve seen in California since the GRACE mission was launched in 2002," Famiglietti said...