Artificial intelligence learns continental hydrology

So far it is not precisely known, how much water a continent really stores. The continental water masses are also constantly changing, thus affecting the Earth's rotation and acting as a link in the water cycle between atmosphere and ocean. Amazon tributaries in Peru, for example, carry huge amounts of water in some years, but only a fraction of it in others. In addition to the water masses of rivers and other bodies of fresh water, considerable amounts of water are also found in soil, snow and underground reservoirs, which are difficult to quantify directly. Now the research team around primary author Christopher Irrgang developed a new method in order to draw conclusions on the stored water quantities of the South American continent from the coarsely-resolved satellite data.