Monthly and sub-monthly hydrological variability: in-orbit validation by GRACE level 1B observations

In this study, we present an approach to validate hydrological model output directly on the level of GRACE level 1B observations by analyzing K-band range-rate residuals. Modeled water mass variations are converted to simulated satellite observations and subtracted from the original measurements. This procedure bypasses the downward continuation and filtering steps generally required for water cycle analysis on the basis of gravity field maps. The goal of the study is twofold: (1) we demonstrate the feasibility of using residuals analysis for hydrological model validation in general and (2) we focus on the potential of the approach to investigate the signal content of temporally high-frequent (daily) modeled hydrological mass variations. In addition to the output of three different hydrological process models, we study mass changes computed from two different daily GRACE products. GRACE here serves as a reference, but its spatial resolution is limited and the daily models are not computed independently. Regarding aspect (1), our results show that the agreement of each of the models with GRACE varies strongly depending on geographical location. Aspect (2) is not only interesting for model validation, but it is also important in the context of improving the GRACE de-aliasing concept. We demonstrate that not only the daily GRACE models, but also the daily hydrological model output contains information on time scales smaller than 1 month. Realistically modeled or observed short-term hydrological mass changes may serve as additional de-aliasing product for GRACE and thus contribute to increasing the accuracy and resolution of future GRACE products.