NASA study provides new global accounting of Earth's rivers

LOS ANGELES, April 26 (Xinhua) -- A study led by NASA researchers has provided new estimates of how much water courses through Earth's rivers, which is crucial information for understanding the planet's water cycle and managing its freshwater supplies.

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California used a novel methodology that combines stream-gauge measurements with computer models of about 3 million river segments around the world.

The study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, estimates that the total volume of water in Earth's rivers on average from 1980 to 2009 was about 2,246 cubic kilometers.

The researchers estimate that the Amazon basin contains about 38 percent of the world's river water, the most of any hydrological region evaluated.

Estimates in the study could eventually be compared with data from the international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite to improve measurements of human impacts on Earth's water cycle, NASA said on Friday.

Launched in December 2022, SWOT is mapping the elevation of water around the globe, and changes in river height offer a way to quantify storage and discharge.