Diagnostic evaluation of river discharge into the Arctic  Ocean and its impact on oceanic volume transports

Winkelbauer, Susanna; Mayer, Michael; Seitner, Vanessa; Zsoter, Ervin; Zuo, Hao; Haimberger, Leopold

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-279-2022

Articles | Volume 26, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-279-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-279-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 26, issue 2

Research article

|

24 Jan 2022

Research article |

| 24 Jan 2022

Diagnostic evaluation of river discharge into the Arctic Ocean and its impact on oceanic volume transports

Susanna Winkelbauer, Michael Mayer, Vanessa Seitner, Ervin Zsoter, Hao Zuo, and Leopold Haimberger

Data sets

ERA5 monthly averaged data on single levels from 1979 to present H. Hersbach, B. Bell, P. Berrisford, G. Biavati, A. Horányi, J. Muñoz Sabater, J. Nicolas, C. Peubey, R. Radu, I. Rozum, D. Schepers, A. Simmons, C. Soci, D. Dee, and J.-N. Thépaut https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.f17050d7

ERA5-Land monthly averaged data from 1981 to present J. Muñoz Sabater https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.68d2bb30

River discharge and related historical data from the Global Flood Awareness System, v2.1 S. Harrigan, E. Zsoter, C. F. W. Barnard, P. Salamon, and C. Prudhomme https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.a4fdd6b9

CSR TELLUS GRACE Level-3 Monthly Land Water-Equivalent-Thickness Surface Mass Anomaly RL06 v03 F. Landerer https://doi.org/10.5067/TELND-3AC63

CSR TELLUS GRACE Level-3 Monthly Ocean Bottom Pressure Anomaly RL06 v03 F. Landerer https://doi.org/10.5067/TEOCN-3AC63

Arctic Great Rivers Observatory, Discharge Dataset A. Shiklomanov, R. Holmes, J. McClelland, S. Tank, and R. G. M. Spencer https://www.arcticgreatrivers.org/data

Short summary

We evaluate Arctic river discharge using in situ observations and state-of-the-art reanalyses, inter alia the most recent Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) river discharge reanalysis version 3.1. Furthermore, we combine reanalysis data, in situ observations, ocean reanalyses, and satellite data and use a Lagrangian optimization scheme to close the Arctic's volume budget on annual and seasonal scales, resulting in one reliable and up-to-date estimate of every volume budget term.