Mielke et al. (2025) GRACE‐FO and Future Satellite Gravity Missions Will Need to Account for Global Cloud Water Convergence

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-10-10
• Authors: Christian Mielke, Jürgen Kusche, Petra Friederichs, Anne Springer
• DOI: 10.1029/2025jd044124

Research Groups

Information not available in the abstract.

Short Summary

This study identifies and quantifies over 50,000 extreme cloud water mass change events globally from 2002 to 2023, demonstrating that these events, comparable in magnitude to water vapor variations, are detectable by GRACE-FO and show increasing frequency and intensity, necessitating their integration into gravity field processing for improved hydrological and climate research.

Objective

• To identify and quantify extreme cloud water mass changes during convective events globally and hypothesize that these changes fall within the detection range of the GRACE-FO laser ranging interferometer.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global, focusing on affected regions, particularly the tropics.
• Temporal Scale: Hours to days (for individual events); 2002 to 2023 (for event catalog and trend analysis); submonthly (for GRACE-FO data exploitation).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: ERA5 (for cloud water data).
• Data sources: Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE-Follow-On (GRACE-FO) gravity field solutions, ERA5 cloud water data.

Main Results

• Identified over 50,000 extreme cloud water events (totaling 0.6 Gt) from 2002 to 2023.
• Cloud water mass changes during these extreme events are comparable in magnitude to water vapor variations.
• Observed a steady annual increase of approximately 52 events, rising from 1,796 events in 2002 to 2,791 events in 2023, alongside increasing intensity.
• This increase in event frequency and intensity is attributed to the intensification of the water cycle driven by global warming.
• Atmospheric cloud water, predominantly during large convective events in the tropics, maps into GRACE-FO observations.

Contributions

• Provides the first global catalog detailing extreme cloud water mass change events and their evolution.
• Demonstrates that cloud water mass changes during extreme convective events are significant and detectable by GRACE-FO.
• Highlights the critical need to integrate state-of-the-art cloud water simulations into atmospheric dealiasing products to improve the exploitation of GRACE-FO and Next Generation Gravity Mission data for ocean science, hydrological, and climate research, especially on submonthly timescales.
• Offers evidence for the intensification of the water cycle due to global warming.

Funding

Information not available in the abstract.

Citation

@article{Mielke2025GRACEFO,
  author = {Mielke, Christian and Kusche, Jürgen 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},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1029/2025jd044124},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025jd044124}
}