Seasonal Variability of Land Water Storage in South America Using GRACE Data

The objective of the present study is to analyze seasonal variability of land water storage in South America from GRACE data. High precision estimate of temporal variations in the Earth's gravity are obtained using monthly Release-04 (RL04) gravity field coefficients provided by the Center for Space Research (CSR) of the University of Texas at Austin. Water mass anomalies, as equivalent height of water, are calculated based on the direct relationship between gravity and mass. To remove the effects of the noise observed in the equivalent-water thickness solutions at high harmonic degrees, an optimized smoothing technique is applied. Finally, temporal distributions of land water storage are compared to monthly mean precipitation data extracted from in-situ rain gauge records in order to identify, correlate and understand patterns of water movement at continental scale in South America.