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Journal Article

Reconciling tracked atmospheric water flows to close the global freshwater cycle

Authors

De Petrillo,  Elena
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/simon.fahrlaender

Fahrländer,  Simon Felix
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;
Submitting Corresponding Author, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Tuninetti,  Marta
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/andersen

Andersen,  Lauren
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Monaco,  Luca
External Organizations;

Ridolfi,  Luca
External Organizations;

Laio,  Francesco
External Organizations;

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32236oa.pdf
(Publisher version), 5MB

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Citation

De Petrillo, E., Fahrländer, S. F., Tuninetti, M., Andersen, L., Monaco, L., Ridolfi, L., Laio, F. (2025): Reconciling tracked atmospheric water flows to close the global freshwater cycle. - Communications Earth and Environment, 6, 347.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02289-y


Cite as: https://publications.pik-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_32236
Abstract
Atmospheric moisture flows play a vital role in the hydrological cycle, connecting evaporation sources to precipitation sinks. While high-resolution tracking models provide valuable insights, discrepancies arise comparing tracked flows to atmospheric reanalysis data. Here we reconcile tracked atmospheric flows with reanalysis data by means of the Iterative Proportional Fitting applied to the UTrack dataset (averaged over 2008–2017) aggregated within countries and ocean boundaries. It corrects country-scale discrepancies of up to 275% in precipitation and 225% in evaporation, adjusting bilateral flows by ~ 0.07 %, on average. The resulting dataset ensures that the total tracked moisture matches total precipitation at the sink and evaporation at the source annually. Remarkably, this procedure can be applied to any tracking model output and scale of analysis. The reconciled dataset enhances transboundary atmospheric water flows analysis, revealing that 45% of total terrestrial precipitation (~1.5 ⋅ 105 km3yr−1) originates from land evaporation (9.8 ⋅ 104 km3yr−1).