Publications related to the GRACE Missions (no abstracts)

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Why Does a Shallow Land Model Underestimate the Dryland Drying Trends?

Zhang, Xue–Yan, Zeng, Xubin, Li, Zhi, Qiu, Yuan, and Niu, Guo–Yue, 2026. Why Does a Shallow Land Model Underestimate the Dryland Drying Trends?. Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres), 131(16):e2026JD046571, doi:10.1029/2026JD046571.

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@ARTICLE{2026JGRD..13146571Z,
       author = {{Zhang}, Xue--Yan and {Zeng}, Xubin and {Li}, Zhi and {Qiu}, Yuan and {Niu}, Guo--Yue},
        title = "{Why Does a Shallow Land Model Underestimate the Dryland Drying Trends?}",
      journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research (Atmospheres)},
         year = 2026,
        month = aug,
       volume = {131},
       number = {16},
          eid = {e2026JD046571},
        pages = {e2026JD046571},
     abstract = "{Most land surface models (LSMs) and macroscale hydrological models with
        shallow soil profiles underestimate observed terrestrial water
        storage (TWS) declines across global drylands. Here, we
        incorporated a recently developed global data set of depth to
        bedrock with spatially varying deeper soils into Noah--MP with
        advanced soil hydrology and plant hydraulics. Results show that
        the more realistic deeper soil representation better reproduces
        both the magnitude and spatial patterns of GRACE--observed
        drying trends across global drylands, whereas the default
        shallow--soil configuration of 2 m, representative of models
        commonly used in GRACE--LSM residual methods (e.g., GRACE--
        GLDAS), substantially underestimates these declines. Deeper
        soils enhance evapotranspiration supported by capillary rise and
        greater deep root water uptake of stored antecedent
        precipitation, particularly during dry seasons, thereby
        amplifying long--term TWS declines. Simulated dryland drying
        trends are dominated by groundwater storage changes rather than
        soil moisture changes. These findings suggest that the commonly
        used approach of estimating groundwater storage anomalies as the
        residual between GRACE TWSA and modeled TWSA from shallow LSMs
        may lead to biased or misleading inferences in GRACE--based
        groundwater assessments.}",
          doi = {10.1029/2026JD046571},
       adsurl = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026JGRD..13146571Z},
      adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

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