Water storage variations and their relation to climate factors over Central Asia and surrounding areas over 30 years

Continental or regional water storage variations (WSVs) are crucial to regional economic development and human society and play an important role in coping with global change. Water scarcity is currently an especially key issue in Central Asia (CA), and therefore, the study of WSVs can aid in the adoption of measures for mitigating pressures from contemporary environmental changes and economic development in CA. Based on Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS), and CRU meteorological datasets and a proposed combined filter strategy, WSVs in Central Asia and its surrounding areas over 30 years are investigated in this paper. The results indicate that the WSVs derived from GRACE and GLDAS over CA generally show a decreasing tendency. CRU data demonstrated that CA has been undergoing a warming trend. The water loss in CA may be caused by warming, which will lead to the loss of soil moisture. Moreover, the water mass in the Tibetan Plateau and Tarim basin increases, which may be caused by glacier melting in the Pamirs and Himalaya. The precipitation contributed little to changes in water storage, but at the basin scale, the precipitation anomalies were very similar to the GRACE and GLDAS data, which can be viewed as an indicator of WSVs.