Identification

Title

Interdecadal variability of terrestrial water storage since 2003

Abstract

Earth’s water cycle is changing due to anthropogenic forcing and internal variations in the climate system. These changes are leading to an intensification of the water cycle that manifests as more frequent and stronger droughts in some areas, and pluvials in others. The resulting impacts on terrestrial water storage can be crucial for water availability. However, current understanding is hampered by limitations in observations and models, and the variety of processes that influence terrestrial water storage across temporal scales. Here, we leverage the now two-decades long satellite record from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and subsequent Follow-On missions to investigate persistent trends in the presence of internal variability. We use cyclostationary empirical orthogonal function analysis to uncover statistical modes of variability that help explain a shift in decadal terrestrial water storage trends that occurred around 2012. The dominant statistical mode suggests an interdecadal periodicity that is also found in the precipitation record. The second leading mode is highly correlated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Isolating these modes points to regions where the magnitude of the terrestrial water storage trend may flatten or reverse in coming decades due to internal climate variability and reduces uncertainty in multidecadal linear trends.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7x352wx

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-03-29T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact