Atmospheric river trajectories organise along a global transport network

Braun, Tobias; Vallejo-Bernal, Sara M.; Marwan, Norbert; Kurths, Juergen; Quaas, Johannes; Díaz-Guilera, Albert; Gimeno, Luis; Mahecha, Miguel D.

doi:10.5194/esd-17-695-2026

Articles | Volume 17, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-17-695-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-17-695-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 3

Research article

| Highlight paper

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12 Jun 2026

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 12 Jun 2026

Atmospheric river trajectories organise along a global transport network

Tobias Braun, Sara M. Vallejo-Bernal, Norbert Marwan, Juergen Kurths, Johannes Quaas, Albert Díaz-Guilera, Luis Gimeno, and Miguel D. Mahecha

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-17-695-2026-supplement

Data sets

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

[Data] Global Atmospheric Rivers Database, Version 4 B. Guan https://doi.org/10.25346/S6/ZSW7UN

The Atmospheric River-CONNected objECT (AR-CONNECT) algorithm applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA V2) - 1983 to 2016 E. J. Shearer et al. https://doi.org/10.6075/J0D21W00

Model code and software

ARnetwork.py Tobias Braun https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20408192

PIKART: A Comprehensive Global Catalog of Atmospheric Rivers (v1.0) S. M. Vallejo-Bernal et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17109482

Image-Processing based Atmospheric River Tracking (IPART) algorithms version 1 G. Xu et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3864592

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Editorial statement

Atmospheric Rivers transport vast amounts of water vapor and are often associated with weather extremes. This paper shows that Atmospheric Rivers organise along a sparse set of preferred pathways, forming a global network. Such a perspective can lead to improved forecasts of extreme precipitation, droughts and polar ice melt under climate change.