Revisiting the global hydrological cycle: is it intensifying?

D. Koutsoyiannis, Revisiting the global hydrological cycle: is it intensifying?, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 24, 3899–3932, doi:10.5194/hess-24-3899-2020, 2020.

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[English]

As a result of technological advances in monitoring atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and biosphere, as well as in data management and processing, several data bases have become freely available. These can be exploited in revisiting the global hydrological cycle with the aim, on the one hand, to better quantify it and, on the other hand, to test the established climatological hypotheses, according to which the hydrological cycle should be intensifying because of global warming. By processing the information from gridded ground observations, satellite data and reanalyses, it turns out that the established hypotheses are not confirmed. Instead of monotonic trends, there appear fluctuations from intensification to deintensification and vice versa, with deintensification prevailing in the 21st century. The water balance on land and sea appears to be lower than the standard figures of literature, but with greater variability on climatic time scales, which is in accordance with Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics. The most obvious anthropogenic signal in the hydrological cycle appears to be the overexploitation of groundwater, which has a visible effect on sea level rise. Melting of glaciers has an equal effect, but in this case it is not known which part is anthropogenic, as studies on polar regions attribute mass loss mostly to ice dynamics.

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  1. The paper was the most read paper of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences in 2020. (See also Altmetric.)
  1. The pdf files linked above are the original ones as reviewed and published in the journal. After publication, by initiative of the handling editor Erwin Zehe and after discussion of the Editors Alberto Guadagnini and Erwin Zehe, and the author Demetris Koutsoyiannis, a minor change in the Acknowledgements section was agreed. Specifically, it was agreed that the links to related presentations of the author that were given in the Acknowledgements section be replaced by a link to the author’s personal home page. This agreement was announced by the Editors in an Editorial Note and implemented. The modified files can be downloaded from the official journal's site at the doi of the paper given above.

External reviews, comments and forum discussions about this article

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  2. Bandwagon Of Doom Washed Away By Tidal Wave Of Data—Reproduced #1 as #2 with comments by Paul Homewood, 2020-04-02 (Not a Lot of People Know That)
  3. Bandwagon Of Doom Washed Away By Tidal Wave Of Data—Reproduced #1 as #3 with comments,, 2020-04-02 (Climate Change Dispatch)
  4. Bandwagon Of Doom Washed Away By Tidal Wave Of Data—Comments for #1, 2020-04-02 (Debate Politics)
  5. Bandwagon Of Doom Washed Away By Tidal Wave Of Data—Reproduced #1 as #5, 2020-04-02 (Before It's News)
  6. Bandwagon Of Doom Washed Away By Tidal Wave Of Data—Reproduced #1 as #6, 2020-04-02 (Roald J. Larsen)
  7. Bandwagon Of Doom Washed Away By Tidal Wave Of Data—Reproduced #1 as #7, 2020-04-02 (Iowa Climate Science Education)
  8. Week in review – climate science edition (with comments) by Judith Curry, 2020-04-03 (Climate Etc.)
  9. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #405) by Ken Haapala, 2020-04-06 (Watts Up With That?)
  10. Eine Waggonladung Untergang von Daten-Flutwelle hinweg gespült—German translation of #1, 2020-04-17 (EIKE – Europäisches Institut für Klima & Energie)
  11. The 'Hydro-illogical cycle' by John Robson, 2020-04-15 (Climate Discussion Nexus)
  12. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup #406) by Ken Haapala, 2020-04-20 (Watts Up With That?)
  13. The Sound Of Settled Science (with comments) (Small Dead Animals)
  14. 観測データと気候モデルの結果が合わない / English translation: Observation data and climate model results do not match (International Environment and Economy Institute)
  15. Revisiting the global hydrological cycle: is it intensifying? by Charles Rotter with comments (Watts Up With That?).

Our works referenced by this work:

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Our works that reference this work:

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