Groundwater resources draining fast, NASA data show

Timothy Cama in the Hill: Humans are depleting a large portion of the world’s groundwater resources, and they are not being naturally refilled, researchers said. The scientists at the University of California Irvine used data from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellites to determine drainage of the world’s largest groundwater aquifers in recent years.

They found that a third of the 37 major aquifers were either worse off in 2013 than in 2003 or were highly stressed. “Available physical and chemical measurements are simply insufficient,” Jay Famiglietti, the principal researcher on the project, said in a Tuesday statement. Famiglietti is both a UC Irvine professor and the top water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Given how quickly we are consuming the world’s groundwater reserves, we need a coordinated global effort to determine how much is left,” he said.

The paper was published Tuesday in the journal Water Resources Research. It is the first to use data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, satellite system, which detects changes in Earth’s gravity that can show groundwater levels.

It found that the most stressed aquifers were in extreme dry areas, whose residents and businesses have leaned most heavily on groundwater....

A bore well pump in India, shot by ABHIJEET, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

NOAA's GOES-R satellite begins environmental testing

NOAA: The GOES-R satellite, slated to launch in 2016, is ready for environmental testing. Environmental testing simulates the harsh conditions of launch and the space environment once the satellite is in orbit. The GOES-R satellite and its instruments will undergo a variety of rigorous tests which includes subjecting the satellite to vibration, acoustics and temperature testing as part of this process.

The environmental testing will take place at Lockheed Martin Corporation’s Littleton, Colorado, facility where the spacecraft is being built. The satellite will be placed inside a large (29’ x 65’) vacuum chamber, where it will remain through late summer. During the thermal vacuum test, the satellite is exposed to the extreme hot and cold temperatures it will experience in space as it orbits the Earth with temperatures ranging from -15 degrees Celsius to 50 degrees Celsius. The satellite will also undergo vibration testing to simulate the experience of launching into space aboard a rocket, and electromagnetic testing to ensure it is properly protected from electromagnetic phenomena in space, like solar flares.

“The start of the environmental testing period is a critically important time for the spacecraft,” said GOES-R Series Program Director, Greg Mandt. “This milestone marks the shift from the development and integration of the satellite to the final testing phases that will prepare the satellite for the rigors of space before its delivery to the launch location later this year.”

...GOES-R represents a significant improvement over current GOES satellite observations and will provide higher-resolution images of weather patterns and severe storms five times faster than today, which will contribute to more accurate and reliable weather forecasts and severe weather outlooks. GOES-R’s environmental data products will support short-term weather forecasts and severe storm watches and warnings, maritime forecasts, seasonal predictions, drought outlooks and space weather predictions. GOES-R products will improve hurricane tracking and intensity forecasts, increase thunderstorm and tornado warning lead time, improve aviation flight route planning, provide data for long-term climate variability studies, improve solar flare warnings for communications and navigation disruptions and enhance space weather monitoring....

Image from NOAA

Bangladesh announces nationwide use of SERVIR satellite-based flood forecasting and warning system

A press release from NASA: Bangladesh officials have announced plans to expand a satellite-based flood forecasting and warning system developed by SERVIR to aid an area where floodwaters inundate from 1/3 to 2/3 of the country annually, killing hundreds of people and affecting millions. The system, which relies on river level data provided by the Jason-2 satellite, last year provided the longest lead time for flood warnings ever produced in Bangladesh.

SERVIR is a joint development initiative of NASA and USAID, working in partnership with leading regional organizations around the globe to help developing countries use information provided by Earth Observing satellites and geospatial technologies for managing climate risks and land use. SERVIR and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development based in Kathmandu, Nepal, developed the Jason-2 based flood forecasting and warning solution.

"Forecasters have the dream to extend lead time for flood warnings," said Amirul Hossain, executive engineer for the Bangladesh Water Development Board. "By using Jason-2 near real-time data, we made a real step forward in the flood forecasting system in Bangladesh."

About 80 million people depend on the BWDB Flood Forecasting and Warning Center flood warnings. This organization has progressively built and expanded its flood forecasting system. However, without data from Jason-2, warnings were issued just three to five days in advance of flooding. During the 2014 monsoon season, the FFWC used the new Jason-2 solution experimentally and was able to forecast flooding eight days in advance at nine locations of the Ganges and Brahmaputra River Basins in the north, northwest, and central part of the country.

..."We hope this is the beginning of a new journey, a new era for further development of the flood early warning system using space data or space technology,” said Hossain. “In the coming year, with support provided by the NASA SERVIR team, we would like to expand the system to many other locations where possible, to enable more people to benefit from this system by receiving more extended lead time for flood forecasts."...

Upper row: The Ganges Brahmaputra Meghna (GBM) river basins and the Ganges-Brahmaputra (GB) delta. Bottom row: The many river deltas (shown as a triangle in each region) located in large remote river basins that lack information for modeling rivers and water management. Image Credit: NASA SERVIR

Global rainfall satellites require massive overhaul

Space Daily via SPX: Circling hundreds of miles above Earth, weather satellites are working round-the-clock to provide rainfall data that are key to a complex system of global flood prediction. A new Cornell University study warns that the existing system of space-based rainfall observation satellites requires a serious overhaul. Particularly in many developing countries, satellite-based flood prediction has weak spots, which could lead to major flooding that catches people by surprise. What's more, four of the 10 dedicated rainfall satellites are past their warranty, further increasing risk of disaster.

The study, published online Feb. 11 in Environmental Research Letters, is led by Patrick Reed, professor of civil and environmental engineering, in collaboration with researchers at Princeton University and the Aerospace Corporation.

"It's important for us to start thinking as a globe about a serious discussion on flood adaptation, and aiding affected populations to reduce their risks," Reed said. "We want to give people time to evacuate, to make better choices, and to understand their conditions."

In their study, Reed and colleagues showed that even assuming all 10 satellites are working well and perfectly coordinated, rainfall data still has many deficits across the globe, including in areas vulnerable to flood risk. Removing the four satellites that have surpassed their design life dramatically increases these deficits, possibly leading to high-intensity flood events to go unobserved.

The study was not all bad news. Reed and colleagues also demonstrated that replacing as few as two of the four satellites past their design life could help close these gaps considerably....

Typhoon Songda in 2011, via NASA

NASA launches groundbreaking soil moisture Mapper

A press release from NASA: The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory, a mission with broad applications for science and society, lifted off at 6:22 a.m. PST (9:22 a.m. EST) Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages SMAP for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, with instrument hardware and science contributions made by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

...SMAP now begins a three-year mission that will figuratively scratch below Earth's surface to expand our understanding of a key component of the Earth system that links the water, energy and carbon cycles driving our living planet. SMAP's combined radar and radiometer instruments will peer into the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of soil, through clouds and moderate vegetation cover, day and night, to produce the highest-resolution, most accurate soil moisture maps ever obtained from space.

The mission will help improve climate and weather forecasts and allow scientists to monitor droughts and better predict flooding caused by severe rainfall or snowmelt -- information that can save lives and property. In addition, since plant growth depends on the amount of water in the soil, SMAP data will allow nations to better forecast crop yields and assist in global famine early-warning systems.

"The launch of SMAP completes an ambitious 11-month period for NASA that has seen the launch of five new Earth-observing space missions to help us better understand our changing planet," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Scientists and policymakers will use SMAP data to track water movement around our planet and make more informed decisions in critical areas like agriculture and water resources."....

NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory lifts off from Space Launch Complex 2 West at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, beginning a three-year mission to map Earth's vital moisture hidden in the soils beneath our feet. Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls 

Satellites for peat's sake

A press release from the European Space Agency: Satellites can help us to safeguard nature’s richest carbon storehouses – peatlands. Peatlands make up just 3% of land but capture twice as much carbon as all forests combined. They are also an important source of drinking water and provide a home to many rare and threatened animals and plants.

Ecosystems work best when left intact but these wetland areas are being threatened by human exploitation, resulting in vast carbon emissions, frequent and uncontrollable fires and loss of valuable landscapes.

 Rezatec in Oxfordshire, UK, supported by ESA’s Integrated Applications Promotions programme, in the Peat spotter project will give landowners an easier and cheaper way of calculating the potential economic value of conserving or restoring their peatlands and monitoring the results of their investment.

“Peat spotter helps landowners to manage their peat resource more sustainably through mapping the area, measuring the carbon it contains and monitoring how its integrity is changing over time,” says Patrick Newton, CEO of Rezatec.

To do this, satellite imagery is used to locate and create initial mappings of peatlands. This information is enriched with ground data collected by field agents using handheld devices. An app prompts users in the field for measurements, satnav adds location information, and the data are then sent directly to a centralised office via satcom for analysis. The new approach is a cost-effective way of measuring peat extent and how intact it is over wide and potentially remote areas that are otherwise expensive to measure or inaccessible from the ground....

A peat deposit in Hanhisuo, Finland, shot by Ohikulkija, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Salinity matters

A press release from the European Space Agency: Measurements of salt held in surface seawater are becoming ever-more important for us to understand ocean circulation and Earth’s water cycle. ESA’s SMOS mission is proving essential to the quest.

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite, SMOS, is monitoring changes in the amount of water held in the surface layers of soil and concentrations of salt in the top layer of seawater – both of which are a consequence of the continuous exchange of water between the oceans, the atmosphere and the land. Launched in 2009, SMOS has provided the longest continuous record of sea-surface salinity measurements from space.

The salinity of surface seawater is controlled largely by the balance between evaporation and precipitation, but fresh water from rivers and the freezing and melting of ice also changes the concentrations. With a wealth of salinity data from SMOS now in hand complemented by measurements from the US–Argentinian Aquarius satellite, which uses a different technique, scientists gathered recently at the UK Met Office to review the benefits this has brought to science.

Speaking at the Ocean Salinity Science and Salinity Remote-Sensing Workshop, Prof. Dame Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist, said, “We need to understand the role of salinity in the closure of the hydrology cycle – arguably the weakest point in global climate modelling.

“Salinity, and particularly sea-surface salinity, is a challenging but important topic for ocean circulation and climate variability about which we need to know more, especially given the recent climate-warming hiatus. The SMOS mission, now celebrating five years in orbit, is providing detailed global measurements of ocean-surface salinity that are now used to address some of these challenges.”....

From the European Space Agency: Average sea-surface salinity values. Areas of red indicate regions of high salinity, and areas of green indicate regions of low salinity. The map is overlaid with the simplified global circulation pattern called the ‘thermohaline circulation’. The blue arrows indicate cool deeper currents and the red indicate warmer surface currents. Temperature (thermal) and salinity (haline) variations are key variables affecting ocean circulation.

NASA study shows 13-year record of drying Amazon caused vegetation declines

A press release from NASA:With global climate models projecting further drying over the Amazon in the future, the potential loss of vegetation and the associated loss of carbon storage may speed up global climate change.

The study was based on a new way to measure the “greenness” of plants and trees using satellites. While one NASA satellite measured up to 25 percent decline in rainfall across two thirds of the Amazon from 2000 to 2012, a set of different satellite instruments observed a 0.8 percent decline in greenness over the Amazon. The study was published on Nov. 11 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While the decline of green vegetation was small, the area affected was not: 2.1 million square miles (5.4 million square kilometers), equivalent to over half the area of the continental United States. The Amazon's tropical forests are one of the largest sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide on the planet.

"In other words, if greenness declines, this is an indication that less carbon will be removed from the atmosphere. The carbon storage of the Amazon basin is huge, and losing the ability to take up as much carbon could have global implications for climate change," said lead author Thomas Hilker, remote sensing specialist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Plants absorb carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants harvest sunlight. The healthier the plants, the greener the forest.

The Amazon basin stores an estimated 120 billion tons of Earth's carbon – that's about 3 times more carbon than humans release into the atmosphere each year. If vegetation becomes less green, it would absorb less of that carbon dioxide. As a result, more of human emissions would remain in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect that contributes to global warming and alters Earth's climate...

Popcorn clouds above the Amazon rainforest, August 19, 2009. This type of cloud forms during the dry season, likely from water vapor released by plants during transpiration. Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory

Brazil to launch new satellite to track deforestation

The New Age (South Africa): Brazil will launch a satellite from China Sunday to keep an eye in the sky on deforestation in the Amazon, the National Space Agency (Inpe) said Thursday. An agency spokesman said the launch of the Cbers-4 satellite was scheduled for 0326 GMT December from Tayuan, China, about 750 kilometers (460 miles) southwest of Beijing.

Brazil and China will share the $30 million cost of sending the two-ton satellite into a 778-kilometer high orbit, the spokesman added.Both countries participated in the development of the satellite, which has four cameras in its payload module. The launch comes a year after its predecessor satellite failed to enter orbit because of a fault with the launch vehicle, China's Long March 4B.

Cbers, standing for China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite, will allow Brazil to keep a close watch from space on deforestation in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical rain forest, as well as administer agriculture and monitor livestock movement. Brazil and China began space cooperation in 1988 and Cbers 1 was launched in 1999, with a second satellite in 2003 and a third in 2007...

A line drawing of the Cbers-1 satellite, public domain

Sophisticated sensor will give NOAA earlier warnings of severe storms

A press release from Lockheed Martin: A Lockheed Martin .. team delivered the first Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument that will provide earlier alerts of developing severe storms and contribute to more accurate tornado warnings. The sensor will fly on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) satellite missions, known as the GOES-R Series.

The team is preparing integration with the first GOES-R spacecraft at Lockheed Martin’s facility near Denver. The satellite is expected to launch in early 2016.

“GLM will have the potential to save lives by using lightning as a reliable indicator of severe weather, like tornados,” said Russell Katz, Lockheed Martin GLM deputy program manager. “A rapid increase of in-cloud lightning can precede severe weather on the ground. Changes in that type of lightning can also give us a better understanding of the updraft strength in thunderstorms.” The instrument also gives us a better understanding of the updraft strength of thunderstorms by capturing changes of the in-cloud lightning.”

GLM provides a new capability to track lightning flashes from geostationary orbit, with continuous coverage of the United States and most of the Western Hemisphere. The heart of the GLM instrument is a high-speed (500 frames per second), 1.8 megapixel focal plane, integrated with low-noise electronics and specialized optics to detect weak lightning signals, even against bright, sunlit cloud backgrounds.

...GOES satellites are a key element in NOAA’s National Weather Service operations, providing a continuous stream of environmental information (weather imagery and sounding data) used to support weather forecasting, severe-storm tracking and meteorological research....

The first Geostationary Lightning Mapper instrument, shown here in a file photo, will be launched aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s next-generation weather satellite missions, GOES-R, starting in 2016. Photo from the Lockheed Martin website

European Space Agency satellite reveals gravity dip from ice loss

A press release from the European Space Agency: Although not designed to map changes in Earth’s gravity over time, ESA’s extraordinary satellite has shown that the ice lost from West Antarctica over the last few years has left its signature.

More than doubling its planned life in orbit, GOCE spent four years measuring Earth’s gravity in unprecedented detail.  Scientists are now armed with the most accurate gravity model ever produced. This is leading to a much better understanding of many facets of our planet – from the boundary between Earth’s crust and upper mantle to the density of the upper atmosphere.

The strength of gravity at Earth’s surface varies subtly from place to place owing to factors such as the planet’s rotation and the position of mountains and ocean trenches.

Recently, the high-resolution measurements from GOCE over Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 have been analysed by scientists from the German Geodetic Research Institute, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the Jet Propulsion Lab in USA and the Technical University of Munich in Germany.

Remarkably, they found that the decrease in the mass of ice during this period was mirrored in GOCE’s measurements, even though the mission was not designed to detect changes over time.

Using gravity data to assess changes in ice mass is not new. The NASA–German Grace satellite, which was designed to measure change, has been providing this information for over 10 years. However, measurements from Grace are much coarser than those of GOCE, so they cannot be used to look at features such as Antarctica’s smaller ‘catchment basins’....

Changes in Earth’s gravity field resulting from loss of ice from West Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 (mE = 10–12 s–2).  A combination of data from ESA’s GOCE mission and NASA’s Grace satellites shows the ‘vertical gravity gradient change’

Nile River monitoring influences North-East Africa’s future

A press release from Curtin University (Australia): Curtin University research that monitors the volume of water in the Nile River Basin will help to level the playing field for more than 200 million North-East Africans who rely on the river’s water supply.

Despite being arguably the longest river in the world, winding through nine different countries, the Nile River is shallow and has a low volume, making its water precious, particularly to those countries located downstream.

Curtin Associate Professor Joseph Awange, Department of Spatial Sciences, has been monitoring extractions or additions of water to the Nile River, and reporting the results to affected countries to allow them to plan for sustainable use of its resources in the future.

“Water levels can be affected by both man-made and natural causes, and our research separates the effects of rain downpours, drought and environmental degradation, so that we can learn about the effects of human uses,” Associate Professor Awange said.

“The difficulty is that human uses – including increased population and domestic water consumption, hydroelectric power and increased agriculture – are all tied to the economic growth of the country implementing it.

“Our project, which was undertaken with Associate Professor Michael Kuhn, also from Curtin’s Department of Spatial Sciences, in conjunction with German researchers, has provided independent, factual understandings which the countries involved can then use to make better decisions, and hopefully plan for sustainable use of the river’s resources for the whole region.”

The project uses data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission, which uses two satellites to detect spatio-temporal changes in the Earth’s gravity field, combined with mathematic techniques to isolate the total water storage (surface, groundwater, and soil moisture) of specific areas....

Aerial view of the Nile at Luxor

Record decline of ice sheets: For the first time scientists map elevation changes of Greenland and Antarctic glaciers

A press release from the Alfred Wegener Institute: Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have for the first time extensively mapped Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice sheets with the help of the ESA satellite CryoSat-2 and have thus been able to prove that the ice crusts of both regions momentarily decline at an unprecedented rate. In total the ice sheets are losing around 500 cubic kilometres of ice per year. This ice mass corresponds to a layer that is about 600 metres thick and would stretch out over the entire metropolitan area of Hamburg, Germany's second largest city. The maps and results of this study are published today in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geoscience
s Union (EGU).

“The new elevation maps are snapshots of the current state of the ice sheets. The elevations are very accurate, to just a few metres in height, and cover close to 16 million km2 of the area of the ice sheets. This is 500,000 square kilometres more than any previous elevation model from altimetry”, says lead-author Dr. Veit Helm, glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven.

For the new digital maps, the AWI scientists had evaluated all data by the CryoSat-2 altimeter SIRAL. Satellite altimeter measure the height of an ice sheet by sending radar or laser pulses in the direction of the earth. These signals are then reflected by the surface of the glaciers or the surrounding waters and are subsequently retrieved by the satellite. This way the scientists were able to precisely determine the elevation of single glaciers and to develop detailed maps.

...The team derived the elevation change maps using over 200 million SIRAL data points for Antarctica and around 14.3 million data points for Greenland. The results reveal that Greenland alone is reducing in volume by about 375 cubic kilometres per year. “When we compare the current data with those from the ICESat satellite from the year 2009, the volume loss in Greenland has doubled since then. The loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has in the same time span increased by a factor of 3. Combined the two ice sheets are thinning at a rate of 500 cubic kilometres per year. That is the highest speed observed since altimetry satellite records began about 20 years ago,” says AWI glaciologist Prof. Dr. Angelika Humbert, another of the study’s authors.

The areas where the researchers detected the largest elevation changes were Jakobshavn Isbrae (Jakobshavn Glacier) in West Greenland and Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. Since February 2014 scientists know that the Jakobshavn Isbrae is moving ice into the ocean at a record rate of up to 46 meters a day. The Pine Island Glacier hit the headlines in July 2013. Back then AWI scientists reported that a table iceberg as large as the area of Hamburg had broken off the tip of its ice shelf. (Link to the AWI press release from the 9th July 2013)

But whereas both the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula, on the far west of the continent, are rapidly losing volume, East Antarctica is gaining volume – though at a moderate rate that doesn’t compensate the losses on the other side of the continent....

The border of an Antarctic glacier, photo from the Alfred Wegener Institute

The rate at which groundwater reservoirs are being depleted is increasing

AlphaGalileo via Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main: In what parts of the world and to what degree have
groundwater reservoirs been depleted over the past 50 years? The Frankfurt
hydrologist Prof. Petra Döll has been researching this using the global water
model WaterGAP. She has arrived at the most reliable estimate to date by taking
into consideration processes which are important in dry regions of the world.
The values calculated were compared with monitoring data from many different
wells and data from the GRACE satellites. These satellites measure changes in
the Earth's gravity field. Döll has come to the conclusion that the rate at
which groundwater reservoirs are being depleted is increasing, but that the
rate is not as high as previously estimated.

90 percent of water consumption is due to irrigation for
farming purposes. Only the comparatively small remainder is used for potable
water and industrial production. As an example, 40 percent of the cereals produced
around the world is irrigated. However, in many cases this results in increased
scarcity of water resources and puts a burden on ecosystems. In dry regions,
the amount taken from groundwater reservoirs can easily exceed the amount being
replenished, so that the groundwater reservoir is overused and depleted.

"By comparing the modelled and measured values of
groundwater depletion, we were able for the first time to show on a global
scale that farmers irrigate more sparingly in regions where groundwater
reservoirs are being depleted. They only use about 70 percent of the optimal irrigation amounts", explains Petra Döll from the Institute of Physical
Geography at the Goethe
University.

The rate at which the Earth's groundwater reservoirs are
being depleted is constantly increasing. Annual groundwater depletion during
the first decade of this century was twice as high as it was between 1960 and
2000. India, the USA, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China are the countries with the
highest rates of groundwater depletion. About 15 percent of global groundwater
consumption is not sustainable, meaning that it comes from non-renewable
groundwater resources. On the Arabian Peninsula, in Libya, Egypt, Mali,
Mozambique and Mongolia, over 30 percent of groundwater consumption is from
non-renewable groundwater.

The new estimate of global groundwater depletion is 113,000
million cubic meters per year for the period from 2000 to 2009, which is lower
than previous, widely varying estimates. This can be considered to be the most reliable value to date, since it is based on improved groundwater consumption
data which takes the likely deficit irrigation into account, and since the
model results correlate well with independent comparative data....

A helical step well, shot by Ankush.sabharwal, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

UN initiative strengthens drought monitoring and early warning in Asia-Pacific

UN News Centre: Although drought is a “silent killer” in Asia and the Pacific, access to scientific information and knowledge remain a challenge for many countries in the region, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) said today at a milestone forum on drought monitoring and early warning.

“Over the past three decades, it is estimated that droughts in the region have affected more than 1.3 billion people and caused damages of over $53 billion,” Shamika Sirimanne, Director of ESCAP’s Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division, said today in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The meeting, organized by ESCAP and the Sri Lanka Ministry of Technology and Research, drew senior Government representatives, regional experts and UN agencies to exchange good practices and discuss strategies to reduce the impacts of agricultural drought and help save lives.

...However, despite significant progress in monitoring agricultural drought, access to satellite-derived data and knowledge for improving early warning remains a challenge for many countries in Asia and the Pacific.

In 2013, ESCAP launched the Regional Drought Mechanism – a platform providing timely and free satellite-based data; products; and training to regional drought-prone countries – to enhance the capacity of Governments for agricultural monitoring and early warning. When combined with information collected on the ground, the data leads to more effective detection of potential drought conditions....

The Victoria Dam in Sri Lanka submerged Teldeniya city under a reservoir. A 2012 drought lowered the reservoir and exposed the city again. Shot by Hasindu2008, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Satellites reveal possible catastrophic flooding months in advance

A press release from the University of California (Irvine): Data from NASA satellites can greatly improve predictions of how likely a river basin is to overflow months before it does, according to new findings by UC Irvine. The use of such data, which capture a much fuller picture of how water is accumulating, could result in earlier flood warnings, potentially saving lives and property. The research was published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

A case study of the catastrophic 2011 Missouri River floods showed that factoring into hydrologic models the total water storage information from NASA’s Gravity Recovery & Climate Experiment mission – including groundwater accumulation below the surface – could have increased regional flood warning lead times from two months to as long as five months.

A review of the 2011 Columbia River floods found that warnings could have been issued three months before they occurred. Comprehensive underground measurements are not currently part of predictive models, which typically take into account river flow rates and some snowfall amounts.

“GRACE data contain important hydrologic information that is not currently being utilized to estimate regional flood potential,” said lead author J.T. Reager, who did the work as a UCI postdoctoral researcher and recently joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion La
boratory as a research scientist. “This could significantly increase flood prediction lead times within large river basins.”

Inland flooding causes an average of 133 deaths and $4 billion in property losses per year in the U.S., according to the National Weather Service. Earlier flood predictions could help water managers better plan for possible water diversion and evacuation strategies.

The two GRACE satellites provide a means to observe monthly variations in total water storage within large river basins based on measurements of tiny changes in Earth’s gravitational field: When the amount of water stored in a region increases, the gravitational pull from that area increases proportionately – which the satellites can detect....

Artist's conception of the GRACE satellites at work, via NASA

OCO-2 Lifts off on carbon-counting mission

Steven Siceloff at NASA: A Delta II rocket blazed off the launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California early Wednesday morning to begin a landmark mission to survey carbon dioxide gas in Earth's atmosphere.

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2, is expected to provide insight into how the planet adjusts to the increased production of carbon dioxide from a vantage point in orbit that will allow it to take readings on a scale never achieved before.

While ground stations have been monitoring carbon dioxide concentrations, OCO-2 will be the first spacecraft to conduct a global-scale reading over several seasons. The spacecraft is expected to produce detailed readings to provide regional sources of carbon dioxide as well as sinks for the greenhouse gas.

"There's quite a lot of urgency to see what we can get from a satellite like OCO-2," said David Crisp, the science team lead for the mission.

...The mission is the first of its kind in the agency's extensive history of Earth-observing spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched to replace the first OCO that did not make it into orbit due to an anomaly in February 2009. The spacecraft carries one instrument and its sole focus is detecting carbon dioxide and watching from space as the Earth "breathes" to see what becomes of the gas.

The instrument is precise enough that researchers will be able to count the number of carbon dioxide molecules in the layers of the atmosphere and use the data to draw conclusions about how the increasing amount of gas will affect things like the global temperature. OCO-2's mission is to last at least two years....

OCO-2's liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base, image by NASA

US Department of Commerce relaxes resolution restrictions

A press release from Digital Globe: DigitalGlobe, Inc. (NYSE: DGI), the leading global provider of commercial high-resolution earth observation and advanced geospatial solutions, today announced that it received notice from the U.S. Department of Commerce on its application to allow the company to sell its highest-quality and industry-leading commercial satellite imagery.

Effective immediately, DigitalGlobe will be permitted to offer customers the highest resolution imagery available from their current constellation. Additionally, the updated approvals will permit DigitalGlobe to sell imagery to all of its customers at up to 0.25m panchromatic and 1.0m multispectral ground sample distance (GSD) beginning six months after its next satellite WorldView-3 is operational. WorldView-3 is scheduled to launch, August 13 or 14, 2014 from Vandenberg Air Force base.

With the launch of WorldView-3, the DigitalGlobe constellation will set a new technological bar for commercial satellite imagery, offering customers the highest available resolution, revisit rate, capacity, and spectral diversity. The company currently operates a fleet of five high-resolution earth imaging satellites. Two of those satellites -- GeoEye-1 and WorldView-2 -- collect imagery sharper than 0.50m, and all customers will have access to that imagery at the highest native resolution. WorldView-3 will provide even higher resolution at 0.31m, and the GeoEye-2 satellite, which is substantially complete, will capture similarly sharp images when it is launched to replace a satellite currently in service or as an expansion to the constellation once warranted by market demand.

"We are very pleased and appreciative that the U.S. Department of Commerce under the leadership of Secretary Penny Pritzker, with support from the U.S. Departments of Defense and State and the Intelligence Community, has made this forward-leaning change to our nation's policy that will fuel innovation, create new high-tech jobs, and advance the nation's commanding lead in this strategically important industry," said Jeffrey R. Tarr, DigitalGlobe CEO. "Our customers will immediately realize the benefits of this updated regulation, as for the first time, we will be able to make our very best imagery available to the commercial market. As a result of this policy update and the forthcoming addition of WorldView-3 to our constellation, DigitalGlobe will further differentiate itself from foreign competition and expand our addressable market."

Additionally, DigitalGlobe announced today that it plans to shift the WorldView-1 satellite into a different orbit, in which it will image the earth in the afternoon local time each day. This shift will optimize the DigitalGlobe constellation to monitor changes on the earth at various times during the day. Customers will be able to image a particular area with multiple satellites in the morning and again with WorldView-1 in the afternoon thus providing consistent views of Earth over much of the day....

A NASA image of the Waldo Canyon fire in 2012

Amazon water comprehensively mapped from space

Science Daily via the Intitut de recherche pour le Developpement (IRD): A research team has refined a highly original method for studying ground water based on altitude measurements taken by satellite. This technique was originally only intended for the study of oceans, and has been used for only a few years to observe continental surface water bodies. After years of work to calibrate and validate the data in the Amazon basin, the researchers measured the altitude and variations in levels of more than 500 rivers, lakes, and flood zones.

Through this observation network, the densest every deployed on this scale, the researchers were able to create the first maps of Amazon groundwater. In the dry season, surface water reservoirs are at the same level as the aquifer that feeds them: altitude measurements of the surface water then made possible direct observations of the height of the groundwater. The researchers then mapped the groundwater ceiling at low water periods, which is to say at its lowest level of the year, from 2003 to 2008. The maps obtained were found to be consistent with direct measurements of water depth carried out in wells.

These first maps offer a way to monitor changes in the groundwater over these five years. Following the drought in 2005, the researchers observed the abrupt drop in its low water level in most of the zone under study. Then, this level gradually rose from the north to the south, to only return to its average value between 2007 and 2008. This result suggests an important "memory effect" in the groundwater. This could in turn have a strong impact on the climate. Because of this, if an abnormally low water level persists, this could contribute to reducing evapotranspiration, limit the moisture level in the atmosphere, and reduce rainfall in time.

The maps obtained are a source of essential and unprecedented information on the spatial and temporal structure of the Amazon groundwater and a major advance for hydrology. They help better understand the large-scale underground hydrological processes involved in the water cycle, carbon cycle, and maintenance of biodiversity in the Amazon. In fact, until now, groundwater was a major unknown in these reports....

Rio Negro in Amazonia, created by IRD/J. Pfeffer, after Hess et al. 2003

Breakthrough provides picture of underground water

Rob Jordan at the Stanford University News Service: ... In a development that could revolutionize the management of precious groundwater around the world, Stanford researchers have pioneered the use of satellites to accurately measure levels of water stored hundreds of feet below ground. Their findings were published recently in Water Resources Research.

Groundwater provides 25 to 40 percent of all drinking water worldwide, and is the primary source of freshwater in many arid countries, according to the National Groundwater Association. About 60 percent of all withdrawn groundwater goes to crop irrigation. In the United States, the number is closer to 70 percent. In much of the world, however, underground reservoirs or aquifers are poorly managed and rapidly depleted due to a lack of water-level data. Developing useful groundwater models, availability predictions and water budgets is very challenging.

...Until now, the only way a water manager could gather data about the state of water tables in a watershed was to drill monitoring wells. The process is time and resource intensive, especially for confined aquifers, which are deep reservoirs separated from the ground surface by multiple layers of impermeable clay. Even with monitoring wells, good data is not guaranteed. Much of the data available from monitoring wells across the American West is old and of varying quality and scientific usefulness. Compounding the problem, not all well data is openly shared.

...The basic concept: Satellites that use electromagnetic waves to monitor changes in the elevation of Earth's surface to within a millimeter could be mined for clues about groundwater. The technology, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), had previously been used primarily to collect data on volcanoes, earthquakes and landslides.

With funding from NASA, the researchers used InSAR to make measurements at 15 locations in Colorado's San Luis Valley, an important agricultural region and flyway for migrating birds. Based on observed changes in Earth's surface, the scientists compiled water-level measurements for confined aquifers at three of the sampling locations that matched the data from nearby monitoring wells....

An irrigation system near Monterey, California, shot by Brendel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license