Hydrology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fisher et al. combine sediment geochemistry and climate modelling to reveal long-term synchrony between erosion rates and orbitally-driven climate oscillations in the tectonically-active southern Central Andes.

    • G. Burch Fisher
    • , Lisa V. Luna
    •  & Lucas J. Lourens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heat transfer in a fracture network is heterogeneous as it depends pre-dominantly on flow velocity and fracture aperture. This finding has direct implications for the heat distribution and exploitation in geothermal and associated natural systems.

    • Thomas Heinze
    •  & Nicola Pastore

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows prominent synchronous co-evolution of drought events in drought hubs in sub-tropical regions, influenced by sea surface temperature patterns and teleconnections. Such simultaneous occurrence of droughts may have detrimental impacts.

    • Somnath Mondal
    • , Ashok K. Mishra
    •  & Benjamin Cook

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Combined with other westerly-sensitive records, a new stalagmite hydroclimate record from northern Italy reveals changing westerly wind directions over the past 6500 years that correspond to a migration of the North Atlantic centres of action.

    • Hsun-Ming Hu
    • , Valerie Trouet
    •  & Chuan-Chou Shen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Liu et al. used the NASA GRACE/FO missions to show that since 2019, groundwater depletion in California’s Central Valley has accelerated by 31% compared to recent droughts, and has increased by a nearly a factor of 5 compared to the 60-year average.

    • Pang-Wei Liu
    • , James S. Famiglietti
    •  & Matthew Rodell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Emissions from local steps dominate the CO2 evasion of mountain river networks, owing to the pronounced turbulence in correspondence of each plunging jet and the low spacing between steps typical of high energy streams.

    • Gianluca Botter
    • , Anna Carozzani
    •  & Nicola Durighetto

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Rivers and streams are increasingly drying with climate change and biogeochemical impacts may be important. In this comment the authors discuss the challenges to the biogeochemistry of non-perennial rivers and streams, and what can be done to tackle them.

    • Margaret A. Zimmer
    • , Amy J. Burgin
    •  & Jacob Hosen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By using network motifs, a new view of the global hydrological cycle is offered. With them, it is revealed that the Amazon rainforest is a one-of-a-kind moisture recycling hub, which shows that the ecosystem may be subject to increased vulnerability

    • Nico Wunderling
    • , Frederik Wolf
    •  & Arie Staal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soil physics simulations show water isotope ratios can differ among drainage, mobile and immobile storages due to transport processes alone, but effects were smaller than field data implying unrepresented processes underly ecohydrologic separation.

    • Catherine E. Finkenbiner
    • , Stephen P. Good
    •  & Salini Sasidharan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of increasing surface melt on annual discharge is unknown for the Greenland Ice Sheet. Here, the authors find that Greenland’s largest single-glacier contributor to sea-level rise accommodates basal floods following supraglacial lake-drainage events with limited impact on ice flow.

    • Laura A. Stevens
    • , Meredith Nettles
    •  & Aaron Stubblefield

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lakes are essential components of the hydrological and biogeochemical cycles. Here, Pi et al develop a global lake dataset called GLAKES via high-resolution satellite images and deep learning to examine global lake changes over four decades.

    • Xuehui Pi
    • , Qiuqi Luo
    •  & Brett A. Bryan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Black carbon and dust deposition advanced the end of the snow season by 17 days on average over the last 40 years in the French Alps and the Pyrenees. The warming-induced snow cover decline was partly offset by decreases in black carbon deposition observed since the 1980s.

    • Marion Réveillet
    • , Marie Dumont
    •  & Paul Ginoux

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Decades-old groundwater is vulnerable to pollution from land uses. This work shows that decades old groundwater flows to deep depths where groundwater pumping is more intense, implying that groundwater pumping can endanger deep groundwater quality.

    • Melissa Thaw
    • , Merhawi GebreEgziabher
    •  & Scott Jasechko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increasing floods and droughts are raising concerns of an accelerating water cycle. A new study shows that the terrestrial water cycle in Brazil has been mostly drying or accelerating, aligned with changes in rainfall, water use, and forest cover.

    • Vinícius B. P. Chagas
    • , Pedro L. B. Chaffe
    •  & Günter Blöschl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wetland vegetation is typically considered only in terms of enhancing sediment accretion and positively impacting land-building. Here, the authors show that the degree of enhancement has a strong dependence on vegetation density through the influence on sediment supply and retention.

    • Yuan Xu
    • , Christopher R. Esposito
    •  & Heidi M. Nepf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Characterization of groundwater systems is important for sustainable freshwater management. Here, the authors map the distribution of groundwater storage changes at several hundred meters below the metropolitan Los Angeles during 2000–2020, by developing a cost-effective method using ambient ground vibrations recorded by seismometers.

    • Shujuan Mao
    • , Albanne Lecointre
    •  & Michel Campillo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Most porous systems comprise structures characterized by dead-end and transmitting pores. Here, authors show that macroscopic transport through such porous medium is controlled by structure-induced laminar vortices inside each dead-end pore, and such cannot be explained by diffusion alone.

    • Ankur Deep Bordoloi
    • , David Scheidweiler
    •  & Pietro de Anna

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Significant regional disparities exist in the time left to prepare for unprecedented drought and how much we can buy time depending on climate scenarios. Specific regions pass this timing by the middle of 21st century even with stringent mitigation.

    • Yusuke Satoh
    • , Kei Yoshimura
    •  & Taikan Oki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While the evaporative water loss from global lakes is invisible, the volume is substantial. In recent decades, lake evaporation volume has been significantly increasing due to enhanced evaporation rate, melting lake ice, and expansion of water extent.

    • Gang Zhao
    • , Yao Li
    •  & Huilin Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    From modern seasonal to the deep time, global data show that continental hydrology has a direct and consistent effect on river and marine Li isotope compositions, highlighting a crucial role of climate on Earth’s weathering and the carbon cycle.

    • Fei Zhang
    • , Mathieu Dellinger
    •  & Zhangdong Jin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of the Amazon forest is tightly coupled to its terrestrial water balance. Here, the authors show that forest biomass changes in the Amazon are a driver of the spatiotemporal variation of evapotranspiration, and such changes could have a larger impact on water availability in the dry regions (southern, eastern) of the Amazon.

    • Mingjie Shi
    • , John R. Worden
    •  & Joshua B. Fisher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fossil groundwater has been under the ground for more than ~12 thousand years. Here the authors show that many wells in the United States tap fossil groundwater resources, and that the frequency that wells are drilled into fossil aquifers is increasing, highlighting the importance of safeguarding fossil groundwater quality and quantity to meet present and future water demands.

    • Merhawi GebreEgziabher
    • , Scott Jasechko
    •  & Debra Perrone

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The formation of double ridges on Europa is poorly understood. Here the authors analyze airborne radar observations of an analog feature on the Greenland Ice Sheet to show that the refreezing of shallow water sills may produce such ridges.

    • Riley Culberg
    • , Dustin M. Schroeder
    •  & Gregor Steinbrügge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Afforestation and reforestation programs aimed at enhancing carbon sequestration may have unintended effects on non-forest ecosystems and biodiversity. Here the authors use remote sensing and land surface modelling to quantify trade-offs between tree planting and wetland conservation in China

    • Yi Xi
    • , Shushi Peng
    •  & Xutao Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global evaporation is a key climatic process that remains highly uncertain. Here, the authors shed light on this process with a novel hybrid model that integrates a deep learning representation of ecosystem stress within a physics-based framework.

    • Akash Koppa
    • , Dominik Rains
    •  & Diego G. Miralles

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thawing permafrost releases carbon that serves as a positive feedback on climate warming. Here the authors experimentally demonstrate that rainfall extremes in the Siberian tundra increase permafrost thaw for multiple years, especially if rainfall coincides with warm periods.

    • Rúna Í. Magnússon
    • , Alexandra Hamm
    •  & Monique M. P. D. Heijmans

  • Article
    | Open Access

    River networks play an important role in biogeochemical processes of the earth system. Here the authors show that cumulative river network function increases faster than watershed size for many biogeochemical processes, particularly at higher river flow, indicating large rivers contribute disproportionately to network function in the Earth System.

    • Wilfred M. Wollheim
    • , Tamara K. Harms
    •  & Jacques C. Finlay

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