Abstract:

Water resources assessments, operational weather and climate predictions, and river flow forecasts, among other applications of societal importance, would benefit from the addition of new or improved hydrological observations. Terrestrial water storage variations are now being derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) with enough precision to contribute to water cycle science. Because these fields are derived independently of the observations and analyses that normally feed into decision support tools and models, they have the potential to improve predictions and water management. However, their value will be limited by the latency, resolution, and accuracy of the GRACE products. This presentation will address these issues and discuss maximizing the value of GRACE for various applications.