Today, the online edition of Spiegel came up with an article on the worsening drought in the Western U.S. The post is related to a current paper of Jay Famiglietti’s group at UCI. His group is popular for using GRACE data in the context of basin-scale hydrological analyses.
Here is another recent paper, applying GRACE data for groundwater depletion estimates in the Middle East. However, such estimates are connected with partly tremendous uncertainties, beeing a result of the spaceborne measuring principle. Keep in mind, GRACE was not intendend for deriving water budget estimates but delivering a sound assessment of the Earth’s gravity field.
A profound insight in the application of GRACE data for hydrological purposes is provided by the doctoral thesis of Benjamin Fersch from the Regional Climate and Hydrology Group at IMK-IFU Garmisch.
Last not least, German researchers are very active in the field of spaceborne evaluation of mass transport phenomena in the Earth System, which is reflected by a current priority programme of the German Research Foundation.
Andy Philipp's Hydrology Blog 