The redistribution of geophysical fluids across the Earth’s surface and near surface driven by water cycle dynamics and its extremes can cause measurable load-induced deformation. In the last decades, increasingly accurate and available space geodetic measurement techniques (among others GNSS, InSAR, satellite gravimetry and altimetry) have enriched our understanding of this response. Accurate observations of crustal deformation together with geophysical models can be applied to quantify the hydrological loads, and through that, they provide new insight into the related hydrological processes. With changing climate also cryospheric mass changes get increasingly important to consider, but usually hydrological models do not explicitly address them. There is still a lack of a unified global mass transport model.
This session aims to attract research that further advances our ability to accurately quantify hydrological mass loads across different temporal and spatial scales, and involving different hydrological compartments (e.g., groundwater, surface water, snow, ice). We invite studies focusing on innovative measurement and modeling approaches and reconciling observations from different geodetic measurement techniques used to study hydrological loading as well as the disentangling of cryospheric and hydrologic signals. Research that assesses the strengths and limitations of each approach and that proposes strategies for a seamless and accurate integration, particularly of cryospheric processes, is highly encouraged. Additionally, we seek studies that conduct intercomparisons of different hydrological model data (land surface, hydrological models) and geodetic measurement techniques to understand their relative strengths, weaknesses, and accuracies.