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

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60460709%3A41330%2F24%3A100710" target="_blank" >RIV/60460709:41330/24:100710 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad1d3a" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad1d3a</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad1d3a" target="_blank" >10.1088/1748-9326/ad1d3a</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

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

Original language description

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.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10501 - Hydrology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GM22-33266M" target="_blank" >GM22-33266M: Investigation of the Terrestrial HydrologicAl Cycle Acceleration (ITHACA)</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

C - Předmět řešení projektu podléhá obchodnímu tajemství (§ 504 Občanského zákoníku), ale název projektu, cíle projektu a u ukončeného nebo zastaveného projektu zhodnocení výsledku řešení projektu (údaje P03, P04, P15, P19, P29, PN8) dodané do CEP, jsou upraveny tak, aby byly zveřejnitelné.

Name of the periodical

Environmental Research Letters

ISSN

1748-9326

e-ISSN

1748-9326

Volume of the periodical

19

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

10

Pages from-to

1-10

UT code for WoS article

001157445900001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

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