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Cited by 173Climate variability and modelsMeteorological Phenomena and SimulationsAtmospheric aerosols and clouds

High-resolution global atmospheric moisture connections from evaporation to precipitation

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Tuinenburg, Obbe A., Theeuwen, Jolanda J. E., Staal, Arie·2020·Earth System Science Data
DOI 10.5194/essd-12-3177-2020

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Abstract

A key Earth system process is the circulation of evaporated moisture through the atmosphere. Spatial connections between evaporation and precipitation affect the global and regional climates by redistributing water and latent heat. Through this atmospheric moisture recycling, land cover changes influence regional precipitation patterns, with potentially far-reaching effects on human livelihoods and biome distributions across the globe. However, a globally complete dataset of atmospheric moisture flows from evaporation to precipitation has been lacking so far. Here we present a dataset of global atmospheric moisture recycling on both 0.5 ∘ and 1.0 ∘ spatial resolution. We simulated the moisture flows between each pair of cells across all land and oceans for 2008–2017 and present their monthly climatological means. We applied the Lagrangian moisture tracking model UTrack, which is forced with ERA5 reanalysis data on 25 atmospheric layers and hourly wind speeds and directions. Due to the global coverage of the simulations, a complete picture of both the upwind source areas of precipitation and downwind target areas of evaporation can be obtained. We show a number of statistics of global atmospheric moisture flows: land recycling, basin recycling, mean latitudinal and longitudinal flows, absolute latitudinal and longitudinal flows, and basin recycling for the 26 largest river basins. We find that, on average, 70 % of global land evaporation rains down over land, varying between 62 % and 74 % across the year; 51 % of global land precipitation has evaporated from land, varying between 36 % and 57 % across the year. The highest basin recycling occurs in the Amazon and Congo basins, with evaporation and precipitation recycling of 63 % and 36 % for the Amazon basin and 60 % and 47 % for the Congo basin. These statistics are examples of the potential usage of the dataset, which allows users to identify and quantify the moisture flows from and to any area on Earth, from local to global scales. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.912710 (Tuinenburg et al., 2020).

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  • Aggregating the monthly moisture flows from Tuinenburg et al. resulted in mean annual moisture flows between all Amazonian countries during 2008-2017.

    “We aggregated these monthly flows, resulting in mean annual moisture flows between all Amazonian countries during 2008–2017.”

    From Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system (2024) · cites this paper as Tuinenburg et al. [134]

  • Tuinenburg et al. published monthly climatological mean (2008-2017) moisture flows between each pair of 0.5° grid cells on Earth.

    “Here we use the runs from Tuinenburg et al.134, who published monthly climatological mean (2008–2017) moisture flows between each pair of 0.5° grid cells on Earth.”

    From Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system (2024) · cites this paper as Tuinenburg et al. [134]

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Research works printed but not linked: 32

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Tuinenburg, O. A., Theeuwen, J. J. E., & Staal, A.
Affiliations
  • Utrecht University (NL)
  • Stockholm Resilience Centre (SE)
Corresponding author
  • Tuinenburg, Obbe A.
  • Theeuwen, Jolanda J. E.
  • Staal, Arie
ORCID
Venue
Earth System Science Data
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
Published
2020-12-04
Volume
12
Issue
4
Pages
3177-3188
ISSN
  • 1866-3508 (ISSN-L)
  • 1866-3516
DOI
10.5194/essd-12-3177-2020
OpenAlex
W3045631046
Cited by
173
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 27 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 12
FWCI
5.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Earth system science data (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (0.16.veni.171.019)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric aerosols and clouds
Keywords
atmospheric moisture recycling, evaporation, precipitation, moisture flow, land evaporation, river basins, Amazon basin, Congo Basin, latent heat, ERA5 reanalysis, global climate

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