Publications related to the GRACE Missions (no abstracts)

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GRACE FO and Future Satellite Gravity Missions Will Need to Account for Global Cloud Water Convergence

Mielke, Christian A., Kusche, Jürgen, Friederichs, Petra, and Springer, Anne, 2025. GRACE FO and Future Satellite Gravity Missions Will Need to Account for Global Cloud Water Convergence. Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres), 130(20):e2025JD044124, doi:10.1029/2025JD04412410.22541/essoar.174558976.68967370/v1.

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@ARTICLE{2025JGRD..13044124M,
       author = {{Mielke}, Christian A. and {Kusche}, J{\"u}rgen and {Friederichs}, Petra and {Springer}, Anne},
        title = "{GRACE FO and Future Satellite Gravity Missions Will Need to Account for Global Cloud Water Convergence}",
      journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres)},
     keywords = {convective storms, cloud water, GRACE Follow On, NGGM, extreme events, climate change},
         year = 2025,
        month = oct,
       volume = {130},
       number = {20},
          eid = {e2025JD044124},
        pages = {e2025JD044124},
     abstract = "{Convective storms cause significant atmospheric and hydrological mass
        changes through the rapid accumulation of water vapor, cloud
        water, and heavy precipitation over hours or days. Gravity
        Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow On
        (GRACE FO) gravity field solutions enable holistic monitoring of
        terrestrial water storage changes, but only after mathematically
        removing modeled atmospheric mass variations from the
        observations. While this removal typically accounts for
        atmospheric water vapor, extreme convective events also lead to
        mass changes arising from liquid and frozen cloud water, which
        are currently neglected in gravity field processing. Using ERA5
        cloud water data, we identified over 50,000 extreme events
        (${\ge} $0.6 Gt) from 2002 to 2023, which we hypothesize to fall
        within the detection range of the GRACE FO laser ranging
        interferometer. Our global catalog provides details on the
        biggest events and the evolution of different atmospheric and
        terrestrial water storages over the affected regions. We show
        that cloud water mass changes during these events can be
        comparable in magnitude to water vapor variations. We also
        observed a steady annual increase of about 52 events, from 1,796
        in 2002 to 2,791 in 2023, alongside increasing intensity, which
        we attribute to the intensification of the water cycle driven by
        global warming. Our findings suggest that atmospheric cloud
        water, predominantly during large convective events in the
        tropics, map into GRACE FO observations and that the integration
        of state of the art cloud water simulations into the dealiasing
        products will improve the exploitation of GRACE FO and Next
        Generation Gravity Mission data for ocean science and
        hydrological and climate research, particularly on submonthly
        timescales.}",
          doi = {10.1029/2025JD04412410.22541/essoar.174558976.68967370/v1},
       adsurl = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025JGRD..13044124M},
      adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

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