Articles | Volume 30, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-3221-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-3221-2026
Research article
 | 
26 May 2026
Research article |  | 26 May 2026

Reconstruction of climate-driven global terrestrial water storage variations (2002–2021) using a four-parameter linear recursive model

Pu Xie and Shuang Yi

Cited articles

An, L., Wang, J., Huang, J., Pokhrel, Y., Hugonnet, R., Wada, Y., Cáceres, D., Müller Schmied, H., Song, C., Berthier, E., Yu, H., and Zhang, G.: Divergent Causes of Terrestrial Water Storage Decline Between Drylands and Humid Regions Globally, Geophys. Res. Lett., 48, e2021GL095035, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL095035, 2021. 
Baldocchi, D., Falge, E., Gu, L., Olson, R., Hollinger, D., Running, S., Anthoni, P., Bernhofer, C., Davis, K., and Evans, R.: FLUXNET: A new tool to study the temporal and spatial variability of ecosystem-scale carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy flux densities, B. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 82, 2415–2434, 2001. 
Beck, H. E., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., Levizzani, V., Schellekens, J., Miralles, D. G., Martens, B., and de Roo, A.: MSWEP: 3-hourly 0.25° global gridded precipitation (1979–2015) by merging gauge, satellite, and reanalysis data, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 589–615, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-589-2017, 2017. 
Beck, H. E., Wood, E. F., Pan, M., Fisher, C. K., Miralles, D. G., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., McVicar, T. R., and Adler, R. F.: MSWEP V2 Global 3-Hourly 0.1° Precipitation: Methodology and Quantitative Assessment, B. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 100, 473–500, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0138.1, 2019. 
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Short summary
We present a global 0.5° × 0.5° daily reconstruction of terrestrial water storage anomalies from 2002–2021, using a novel four-parameter linear recursive model driven only by precipitation and temperature. The model exhibits strong physical interpretability, efficiently quantifies the precipitation-to-storage conversion fraction, and achieves faster parameter convergence. It outperforms existing models in 89 % of basins, with Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency values exceeding 0.7 in 84 basins. 
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