Neto et al. (2026) Hydroclimatic Variability Shapes Long‐Term Water Balance

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Geophysical Research Letters
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-04-01
• Authors: Antônio Alves Meira Neto, André S. Ballarin, Paulo Tarso S. Oliveira, Guo‐Yue Niu
• DOI: 10.1029/2025gl121486

Research Groups

Not specified in the abstract.

Short Summary

This study demonstrates that sub-annual hydroclimatic variability, including seasonal covariance, monthly variance, and event-scale storm structure, significantly influences long-term water balance, proposing an expanded aridity framework to explicitly integrate these factors into water-balance theory.

Objective

• To demonstrate that seasonal covariance, monthly variance, and event-scale storm structure leave persistent, organized imprints on long-term water balance.
• To introduce a hypothesis-driven expansion of the aridity framework that incorporates these sub-annual variability terms into long-term water-balance theory.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Large-sample observations from catchments across the United States, Australia, and Brazil.
• Temporal Scale: Long-term, seasonal, monthly, and event-scale.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: A hypothesis-driven expansion of the aridity framework.
• Data sources: Large-sample observations from catchments.

Main Results

• Seasonal covariance, monthly variance, and event-scale storm structure leave persistent, organized imprints on long-term water balance.
• Sub-annual climate organization can be explicitly embedded within long-term water-balance theory through the introduced variability-aware aridity framework.

Contributions

• Introduces a novel, hypothesis-driven expansion of the classical aridity framework by incorporating sub-annual hydroclimatic variability terms (seasonal covariance, monthly variance, event-scale storm structure).
• Provides a mechanistic pathway for assessing how shifts in climate variability, even under approximately stationary long-term mean precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, may propagate into future water yields.
• Offers a new variability-aware perspective that explicitly embeds sub-annual climate organization within long-term water-balance theory.

Funding

Not specified in the abstract.

Citation

@article{Neto2026Hydroclimatic,
  author = {Neto, Antônio Alves Meira and Ballarin, André S. and Oliveira, Paulo Tarso S. and Niu, Guo‐Yue},
  title = {Hydroclimatic Variability Shapes Long‐Term Water Balance},
  journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1029/2025gl121486},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1029/2025gl121486}
}