Global patterns in river water storage dependent on residence time
作者：Elyssa L. Collins，Cédric H. David?，Ryan Riggs等
Accurate assessment of global river fows and stores is critical for informing water management practices, but current estimates of global river fows exhibit substantial spread and estimates of river stores remain sparse. Estimates of river fows and stores are hampered by uncertainties in land runof, an unobserved quantity that provides water input to rivers. Here we leverage global river fow observations and an ensemble of land surface models to generate a globally gauge-corrected monthly river fow and storage dataset. We estimate a global river storage mean (± monthly variability) of 2,246?±?505 km3??and a global continental fow of 37,411?±?7,816?km3 ?yr?1. Our global river water storage time series demonstrates that fow wave residence time is a fundamental driver that can double or halve river water stores and their variability. We also reconcile the wide range in previous estimates of monthly variability in global river fows. We identify previously underappreciated freshwater sources to the ocean from the Maritime Continent (Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea) amounting to 1.6 times the Congo River and illustrate our capability of detecting severe anthropogenic water withdrawals.
（來(lái)源：Nat. Geosci.?17, 433–439 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01421-5）