Roelof Rietbroek
The data analysis of this work will involve some programming and use of statistical methods. I'm looking forward to support the student in this, but I do expect that they bring a positive and curious attitude towards learning (new) programming skills.
Water plays a crucial role in the Greater Horn of Africa, as it is used for crop irrigation, drinking water, it modulates the availability of fodder for livestock, and is in some places used for hydropower generation. On the one hand, the dynamics of the population and its water use may push the water resources to its boundaries while on the other hand climate change may change the (seasonal) transport of water into the region, and thus the availability over time.
Within this project, data from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment will be used to observe the 'big picture' of the region in terms of total water storage changes. To tackle this, the seasonality of the water storage change will be analyzed in the region, and the student will assess whether the seasonal cycle is already changing in the region.
In this Msc project, you will analyze terrestrial water storage changes from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and its follow-on mission. You will create visualizations of these data and compute time series and monthly climatologies of watershed averages. A key question of this project will be whether we can already observe a wetting or drying over the ~18 years of observations. Where possible, you'll use auxiliary data (e.g. precipitation, river discharge, ..) to better understand the observed changes.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10712-018-9465-3, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004896971933387X