Dai and Trenberth Global River Flow and Continental Discharge Dataset

SOURCE:

  • Dai, A., T. Qian, K. E. Trenberth, and J. D Milliman, 2009: Changes in continental freshwater discharge from 1948-2004. J. Climate, 22, 2773-2791 [pdf]
  • Dai, A., and K. E. Trenberth, 2002: Estimates of freshwater discharge from continents: Latitudinal and seasonal variations. J. Hydrometeorol., 3, 660-687. [pdf]

DATA DESCRIPTION: Time series of monthly river flow rates at the farthest downstream station for the world's largest 925 rivers, plus long-term river flow rates and continental discharge into the individual and global oceans.

PLEASE NOTE: For our own record, we would appreciate it very much if you could email Dr. A. Dai with a few lines to indicate your intended use of the data after you download. Thanks.

Files from Dai et. al (2009):

NOTE: The station annual flow rate "Vol" in  coastal-stns-byVol-updated-oct2007.txt and "vol_stn" in coastal-stns-Vol-monthly.updated-oct2007.nc for Niger and other 19 U.S. rivers were in unit of m3/s, instead of km3/yr as stated in the files. This error was corrected on June 17, 2013. Other data were not affected by this error.

Files from Dai and Trenberth (2002)

The following files are Fortran binary format created on a Sun workstation (withsequential access). The 2-dim. grids are 1x1 deg and 4 (lat) x 5 (lon) deg grids with box (1,1) is centered at (179.5W, 89.5S) for the 1deg grid and (177.5W, 88.0S) for the 4x5 grid. The values are discharge in Sv or 1E6 m3/s) within the coastal boxes (some boxes may be at the farthest downstream stations of small rivers and thus not right on the coasts in the 921 river case. These boxes need to be included in computing discharge from a lat zone). Each annual file (*ann.bin) contains one map of real runoff(360,180) for 1deg grid or runoff (72,45) for 4x5 grid.  Each monthly file (*mon.bin) contains 12 maps or records. All files contain 2-d array(s) of real*4 numbers.

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