Does ERA5-land capture the changes in the terrestrial hydrological cycle across the globe

Datos Bibliográficos

ID15544745
AutoresRiya Dutta (0000-0003-0401-228X, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, autor de correspondencia), Yannis Markonis (0000-0003-0144-8969, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague)
Año2024
Volumen19
Número2
Páginas024054-024054
Fecha de publicación2024-01-10
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironmental Research Letters (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326
EditorialIOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1088/1748-9326/ad1d3a
OpenAlexW4390692693
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas47

Changes in the terrestrial hydrological cycle determine the future water availability across the globe with profound impacts in different facets of society. Precise estimation of such changes is vital for the effective implementation of water management policies. Among the numerous data products that describe the hydrological cycle components, ERA5-Land is one of the most increasingly used dataset. Still, there has been no assessment of its ability capacity to represent the water cycle shifts variability over land. This study endeavors to bridge this gap by comparing the magnitude and direction of change in precipitation minus evaporation ( P—E ) and runoff, as estimated globally by the ERA5-Land data product. Our findings reveal significant inconsistencies in the changes identified, with the climatological mean of P—E decreasing more substantially than runoff for numerous regions. Consequently, ERA5 presents a declining water availability for most of the regions, but the magnitude of change is incompatible to the change between P—E and runoff. To further validate, the estimates provided by the ERA5-Land product, two different hydrologic models (TerraClimate and Global Land Data Assimilation System, GLDAS-Noah) are also utilized. TerraClimate demonstrates a more reasonable alignment between changes in P—E and runoff, followed by GLDAS-Noah, particularly for the arid regions lying in the parts of Northern Africa and Southern Asia, the European continent, and the northern parts of Asia. Inconsistencies remain high for the tropical regions for both data products. Still, the estimates of change in water availability are better represented by the hydrologic model-based data sources for most parts of the globe, especially for the regions with low precipitation, such as the regions with arid and continental climates. Our results imply that ERA5-Land should be used with extreme caution when assessing the long-term changes in the terrestrial water cycle. Additionally, pinpointing the regions of the highest bias can help to improve the hydrological coupling of ERA5-Land in future versions of the reanalysis

Arid · Climate change · Climatology · Geography · Hydrology (agriculture · Land use · Land use, land-use change and forestry · Meteorology · Physical geography · Precipitation · Surface runoff · Water cycle · Climate variability and models · Environmental Science · Geophysics and Gravity Measurements · Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies · Ecology · Geology