We overview and retrieve a great amount of global hydroclimatic data sets. We improve the quantification of the global hydrological cycle, its variability and its uncertainties through the surge of newly available data sets. We test (but do not confirm) established climatological hypotheses, according to which the hydrological cycle should be intensifying due to global warming. We outline a stochastic view of hydroclimate, which provides a reliable means of dealing with its variability.

In the present study the flood trends have been assessed for a large sample of 171 basins located in southern France, which has a Mediterranean climate. Results show that, despite the increase in rainfall intensity previously observed in this area, there is no general increase in flood magnitude. Instead, a reduction in the annual number of floods is found, linked to a decrease in soil moisture caused by the increase in temperature observed in recent decades.

Interactions between soil moisture and terrestrial evaporation affect responses between land surface and the atmosphere across scales. We present an analysis of the link between soil moisture and evaporation estimates from three distinct models. The relationships were examined over nearly 2 years of observation data. Results show that while direct correlations of raw data were mostly not useful, the root-zone soil moisture and the modelled evaporation estimates reflect similar distributions.

The hydrologic reference stations website (www.bom.gov.au/water/hrs/), developed by the Australia Bureau of Meteorology, is a one-stop portal to access long-term and high-quality streamflow information for 222 stations across Australia. This study investigated the streamflow variability and inferred trends in water availability for those stations. The results present a systematic analysis of recent hydrological changes in Australian rivers, which will aid water management decision making.

This paper is aims to detect the climate change impacts on the hydrological regime from the long-term discharge records. A new method for stochastic analysis using copulas, which has the advantage of scrutinizing the data independent of marginal, is suggested in this paper. Two measures are used in the copula domain: one focuses on the asymmetric characteristic of data and the other compares the distances between the copulas. These are calculated for 100 years of daily discharges and the results are discussed.