Testing the use of standardised indices and GRACE satellite data to estimate the European 2015 groundwater drought in near-real time

Van Loon, Anne F.; Kumar, Rohini; Mishra, Vimal

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1947-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1947-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

HYPER Droughts (HYdrological Precipitation – Evaporation...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1947-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 4

Research article

|

11 Apr 2017

Research article |

| 11 Apr 2017

Testing the use of standardised indices and GRACE satellite data to estimate the European 2015 groundwater drought in near-real time

Anne F. Van Loon, Rohini Kumar, and Vimal Mishra

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Apr 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 18 Nov 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Referee comments to hess-2016-561', Miriam Fendekova, 29 Dec 2016
- AC1: 'author reply to Miriam Fendekova', Anne Van Loon, 25 Jan 2017
RC2: 'Interactive comments on “The European 2015 drought from a groundwater perspective: estimation in absence of observed groundwater data” by Anne F. Van Loon et al.', John Bloomfield, 04 Jan 2017
- AC2: 'author reply to John Bloomfield', Anne Van Loon, 25 Jan 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (26 Jan 2017) by Jamie Hannaford

Dear authors

There has been some good discussion on a few key points on this paper, but generally the reviewer comments are minor issues of presentation, clarification and interpretation. The authors suggestions for revisions sound very reasonable and I am confident the final paper will be suitable for publication.

One issue surrounds the choice of title. I suggested a minor addition at the first editor review stage, but I also agree with John Bloomfield that the title doesn't reflect the paper so well. I can, however, see the merit of the authors' response, i.e. that they wish to keep the link with the companion papers.

In my opinion, it is better for the title to reflect the aims of this paper well rather than force the link with the other two papers. They are quite different in scope, aims and geographical extent. So, personally I would opt for a compromise title that speaks directly to the aims of this paper but does indeed mention the 2015 drought. With this in mind, both new titles suggested by the authors would be suitable and I leave the final choice to them! (for what it's worth I prefer the latter simpler title: “Testing the use of standardised indices....").

And of course, highlighting the links between the papers in the text is still a good idea. It is already explained that this paper seeks to provide a groundwater perspective to compare with the other two, but that data availability is on a different level of maturity. I'm sure the reader will appreciate a different approach is required, whereby analysis is first needed to have confidence in these proxy measures, before the 2015 groundwater drought can be fully explored.

I look forward to seeing a revised manuscript,

Best wishes
Jamie Hannaford

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AR by Anne Van Loon on behalf of the Authors (14 Feb 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (15 Mar 2017) by Jamie Hannaford

AR by Anne Van Loon on behalf of the Authors (15 Mar 2017)

Short summary

Summer 2015 was extremely dry in Europe, hampering groundwater supply to irrigation and drinking water. For effective management, the groundwater situation should be monitored in real time, but data are not available. We tested two methods to estimate groundwater in near-real time, based on satellite data and using the relationship between rainfall and historic groundwater levels. The second method gave a good spatially variable representation of the 2015 groundwater drought in Europe.