Water mass impacts of the main climate drivers over Australia by satellite gravimetry

We propose a spatial characterization of the hydrological contributions of several climate drivers that impact continental water mass storage of Australia determined by remote sensing techniques over the period 2002 - 2021. For this purpose, the Slepian functions help for recognizing the signatures of such important changes in the varying gravity field solutions provided by GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite missions such as mascon solutions of 400-km resolution. Time series of 25 Slepian coefficients that correspond to ~99.9% of the eigenvalue spectrum are used to be analyzed and compared to the profiles of climate indexes i.e. El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and South Annular Mode (SAM). The best correlations enable to extract specific Slepian coefficients, and then reconstruct the regional hydrological structures that concern each climate driver, in particular for the southeastern basins strongly influenced by the important flooding during La Niña episode of 2010.