Hydrology articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change may impact groundwater storage and thus the availability of freshwater resources. Here the authors use climate models to examine seven aquifers and find that storage changes are primarily the result of enhancement of evapotranspiration, reduction in snowmelt, and over-pumping rather than long-term precipitation changes.

    • Wen-Ying Wu
    • , Min-Hui Lo
    •  & Zong-Liang Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors here address water sustainability in the greater area of Beijing, China. Specifically, the positive effects towards Beijing groundwater levels via water diversion from the Yangtze River to the North are shown.

    • Di Long
    • , Wenting Yang
    •  & Yoshihide Wada

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assessments of future virtual water trading are still lacking. Here the authors estimated the global virtual water trade throughout the century and found that virtual green water exports and virtual blue water exports at least triple to more than 3200 bcm and 170 bcm, respectively, by the end of the century.

    • Neal T. Graham
    • , Mohamad I. Hejazi
    •  & Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biomonitoring via environmental DNA (eDNA) is an important conservation tool for freshwater ecosystems, but this is complicated by eDNA movement downstream. Here, Carraro et al. develop and test an approach to reconstruct high-resolution spatial biodiversity patterns from freshwater eDNA.

    • Luca Carraro
    • , Elvira Mächler
    •  & Florian Altermatt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors of this study compile data on spatial and temporal dynamics of surface water bodies across China, covering a time span from 1989 – 2016. The study describes hot-spot areas with strongly decreasing trends in surface water area and terrestrial water storage in North China and discusses implications of water resources and security in China.

    • Xinxin Wang
    • , Xiangming Xiao
    •  & Bo Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies on examining the climate impact on irrigated agriculture do not account for regional specific details. Here the authors studied both the direct and indirect impact of climate change on irrigated agriculture in the Yakima River Basin (YRB) and found that increasingly severe droughts and temperature driven reductions in growing season significantly reduces expected annual agricultural productivity.

    • Keyvan Malek
    • , Patrick Reed
    •  & Michael Brady

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Anomalously specular radar reflections (ASRR) from Titan’s tropical region were interpreted earlier as evidence for liquid surfaces, but the Cassini spacecraft did not observe lakes/seas at the anomalously specular locations. Here, the authors show that ASRR originate from one terrain unit, likely paleolakes/paleoseas.

    • Jason D. Hofgartner
    • , Alexander G. Hayes
    •  & Stephen D. Wall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Floods are an important natural disaster on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, but their driving mechanisms are not well understood. Here, the authors utilize data from twitter messages and local newspaper reports to show that convectively coupled Kelvin waves play a key role in promoting floods on Sumatra.

    • Dariusz B. Baranowski
    • , Maria K. Flatau
    •  & Marzuki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impacts of power plant water shortage during drought on electricity prices are understudied. Here the authors show that on extreme days, almost 50% (7 GWe) of the freshwater thermal capacity is unavailable in the Great Britain and annualized cumulative costs on electricity prices are in the range of £29-95m per year.

    • Edward A. Byers
    • , Gemma Coxon
    •  & Jim W. Hall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Generally it is thought that confining clay layers provide protection to low-arsenic groundwaters against intrusion of shallower, high-arsenic groundwater bodies. Here, the authors show that impermeable clay layers can increase arsenic input to underlying groundwater systems due to reduction of iron oxides coupled to carbon oxidation.

    • Ivan Mihajlov
    • , M. Rajib H. Mozumder
    •  & Alexander van Geen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Siberian Arctic permafrost contains vast stores of carbon, the fate of which is dependent on the climate. Here the authors use models of future scenarios to show that under the direst climate changes up to 2/3 of the stored organic carbon could thaw.

    • Jan Nitzbon
    • , Sebastian Westermann
    •  & Julia Boike

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tropical cyclones can cause severe flooding when making landfall, but these water flows can often only be forecasted a few hours before. Here, the authors present a new approach using self-organizing maps and flow characteristic curves to predict tropical cyclone related runoff up to two days in advance.

    • Li-Chiu Chang
    • , Fi-John Chang
    •  & Edwin E. Herricks

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors investigate the infiltration potential of more than 500 vacant lots in the City of Buffalo, NY, USA. They found that the expanding footprint of pervious cover as urban vacant land provides stormwater volume retention benefits on an event and annual basis.

    • Christa Kelleher
    • , Heather E. Golden
    •  & William Shuster

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the authors show that water flowing through thawed soils below the tundra surface (supra-permafrost groundwater) can be a major source of dissolved organic matter (DOM) to Arctic coastal waters during the summer. This DOM contains leachates from old soil carbon stocks, including potential contributions from thawing permafrost.

    • Craig T. Connolly
    • , M. Bayani Cardenas
    •  & James W. McClelland

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Economic estimates of flood damages rely on depth–damage functions that are inadequately verified. Here, the authors assessed flood vulnerability in the US and found that current depth–damage functions consist of disparate relationships that match poorly with observations which better follow a bimodal beta distribution.

    • Oliver E. J. Wing
    • , Nicholas Pinter
    •  & Carolyn Kousky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors here combine a range of geophysical data, numerical modelling and borehole data to present a high resolution map of an offshore freshened groundwater system in the Canterbury Bight, New Zealand. The study shows the extensions of the offshore freshened groundwater system to be controlled by high permeability shelf sediments, buried paleochannels and onshore rivers.

    • Aaron Micallef
    • , Mark Person
    •  & Ashwani Kumar Tiwari

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors compared the performance of a range of rural water supply types during drought in Ethiopia. They show that prioritising access to groundwater via multiple improved water sources and technologies, such as hand-pumped and motorised boreholes, supported by monitoring and proactive operation and maintenance increases rural water supply resilience.

    • D. J. MacAllister
    • , A. M. MacDonald
    •  & R. Calow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    New hydrological simulations show for the first time how sensitive groundwater and surface water connections are to systematic warming across the continental United States. The authors here show a clear reduction in subsurface water storage under a warming climate and intensified aridification of north America.

    • Laura E. Condon
    • , Adam L. Atchley
    •  & Reed M. Maxwell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effect of soil structure is not included in most Earth System Models. The authors here introduce and evaluate the consequences at local and global scale of modifying hydraulic properties of soils in response to biological activity—a process significantly changing soil structure.

    • Simone Fatichi
    • , Dani Or
    •  & Roni Avissar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the effects of irrigation on the climate conditions compare to other anthropogenic forcings is not well known. Observational and model evidence show that expanding irrigation has dampened historical anthropogenic warming during hot days, an effect that is particularly strong over South Asia.

    • Wim Thiery
    • , Auke J. Visser
    •  & Sonia I. Seneviratne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, a new analytical technique is employed to measure Kr and Xe isotopes in groundwater at high precision. These measurements indicate that gravitational signals of past water-table depth are preserved in ancient groundwater, representing a novel proxy for past terrestrial hydroclimate.

    • Alan M. Seltzer
    • , Jessica Ng
    •  & Jeffrey P. Severinghaus

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    As climate change thaws the Arctic’s foundations, new subterranean waterways form and threaten to wash away and decompose carbon once locked in permafrost. In this Comment, Vonk and co-authors outline a cross-disciplinary strategy--with hydrology at the forefront--to better understand the fate of Arctic carbon.

    • J. E. Vonk
    • , S. E. Tank
    •  & M. A. Walvoord

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The variations in overbank flow from rivers onto floodplains from regional to continental scales are understudied. Here, the authors investigate this variation as a function of hydroclimatic parameters and channel size in the conterminous U.S. and find that the timing of floodplain inundation is largely controlled by regional factors, while the frequency, duration and magnitude of these inundations vary consistently with channel size.

    • Durelle T. Scott
    • , Jesus D. Gomez-Velez
    •  & Judson W. Harvey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The role of solar and wind energy (SWE) in management of water-food-energy (WFE) nexus is largely neglected. Here the authors developed a trade-off frontier framework to quantify the water sustainability value of SWE and applied it in California, where they found that SWE penetration creates beneficial feedback for the WFE nexus by enhancing drought resilience and benefits groundwater sustainability over long run.

    • Xiaogang He
    • , Kairui Feng
    •  & Justin Sheffield

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There still lacks a forecast system that inform end-users regarding the drought impacts, which will be however important for drought management. Here the authors assess the feasibility of forecasting drought impacts using machine-learning and confirm that models, which were built with sufficient amount of reported drought impacts in a certain sector, are able to forecast drought impacts a few months ahead.

    • Samuel J. Sutanto
    • , Melati van der Weert
    •  & Henny A. J. Van Lanen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flash droughts are widely discussed in the scientific community since the rapid onset of the 2012 drought in the USA. Here, the authors model the temporal frequency of potential flash drought events and the exposure risk over China for the next 80 years.

    • Xing Yuan
    • , Linying Wang
    •  & Miao Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Remote sensing observations of mountain snow depth are still lacking for the Northern Hemisphere mountains. Here authors use Sentinel-1 satellite radar measurements to assess the snow depth in mountainous areas at 1 km² resolution and show that the Sentinel-1 retrievals capture the spatial variability between and within mountain ranges, as well as their inter-annual differences.

    • Hans Lievens
    • , Matthias Demuzere
    •  & Gabrielle J. M. De Lannoy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “Reconstruction of precipitation variability from oxygen isotopes in the Mesoamerican and Caribbean region is made difficult by the occurrence of tropical cyclones. Here, the isotopic evolution of a tropical cyclone is studied in detail which helps disentangle the key processes governing rainfall isotope variability in the region.”

    • Ricardo Sánchez-Murillo
    • , Ana M. Durán-Quesada
    •  & Kim M. Cobb

  • Article
    | Open Access

    δ18O of speleothems are a widely used paleoclimate proxy. Here, the authors conduct a global analysis of cave drip water δ18O compositions and find that drip waters from warmer climates have a seasonal bias toward precipitation δ18O of recharge periods, unlike in cooler climates where drip waters match well with recharge-weighted δ18O.

    • Andy Baker
    • , Andreas Hartmann
    •  & Martin Werner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Subglacial lakes can influence basal hydrology and ice flow in Antarctica, but are poorly constrained in Greenland. Here the authors provide the first ice sheet-wide inventory of subglacial lakes beneath GrIS, including 54 uncharted lakes.

    • J. S. Bowling
    • , S. J. Livingstone
    •  & W. Chu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The spread of flood-induced failures in critical infrastructure systems is understudied. Here the authors apply the CaMa-Flood global river flood simulation model to estimate the flood-induced failures and their spread in China and the US and find that the number of flood-induced total failures is in-between that of random and localized damage given the same intensity.

    • Weiping Wang
    • , Saini Yang
    •  & Jianxi Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The freshwater surface layer from the south China seas weakens the Indonesian throughflow during boreal winter, but the impact of the monsoon water cycle of the maritime continent on this freshwater plug is unknown. Here the authors use satellite observations to show a direct link between the regional water cycle in the maritime continent and the freshwater plug.

    • Tong Lee
    • , Séverine Fournier
    •  & Janet Sprintall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The impacts of forest fire activity in the western US on snow melt are poorly quantified. Here the authors use satellite and field-based observations to document a four-fold increase in the solar forcing on snow in western burned forests from 1999 to 2018.

    • Kelly E. Gleason
    • , Joseph R. McConnell
    •  & Wendy M. Calvin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is a growing consensus that groundwater inflow supplies most of the C load to streams, but the sources and timescales generating this flux are still unknown. Here, the authors demonstrate that soil respiration, derived from current forest carbon fixation, fuels stream CO2 emissions.

    • A. Campeau
    • , K. Bishop
    •  & M. B. Wallin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    For the first time, climate change experiments with a convection-permitting model have been carried out over an Africa-wide domain. These show more severe future changes in both wet and dry extremes over Africa compared to a traditional coarser resolution climate model.

    • Elizabeth J. Kendon
    • , Rachel A. Stratton
    •  & Catherine A. Senior

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Water isotope modelling is an important tool in climate reconstructions, but there remain gaps in our understanding of the effects upon oxygen and hydrogen isotope fractionation, and thus the source of the deposited signal. Here, the authors present a dataset assembled over two years that shows deuterium excess is controlled by humidity and sea surface temperature, and oxygen and hydrogen isotopes as well as deuterium excess are controlled by sublimation of snow in sea-ice regions.

    • Jean-Louis Bonne
    • , Melanie Behrens
    •  & Martin Werner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forecasting drought and its impact on agriculture and ecosystems is challenged by a lack of knowledge of vegetation access to deep moisture. Here the authors show that combining vegetation and water storage remote sensing can be used to infer this knowledge, allowing drought impact forecasts months in advance.

    • Siyuan Tian
    • , Albert I. J. M. Van Dijk
    •  & Luigi J. Renzullo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The underlying mechanisms structuring dissolved organic matter (DOM) composition and reactivity in rivers remain poorly quantified. Here, the authors pair mass spectrometry and fluorescence spectroscopy to show that hydrology and river geomorphology both shape molecular patterns in DOM composition.

    • Laurel M. Lynch
    • , Nicholas A. Sutfin
    •  & Matthew D. Wallenstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ocean warming contributes to the thinning of the Antarctic ice shelves, however, lack of observations has prevented a quantification of this contribution. Here the authors use geological records to show that 0.3–1.5 °C ocean warming has played a central role on regional ice shelf instability over the last 9000 years.

    • Johan Etourneau
    • , Giovanni Sgubin
    •  & Jung-Hyun Kim

Browse broader subjects

Browse Hydrology across other nature.com journals