Extended Data Fig. 5: Spatial patterns of seasonal TWS anomalies from models and GRACE data.

Shown are the seasonal averages (December-February (DJF), March-May (MAM), June-August (JJA), and September-November (SON)) of the simulated (multi-model ensemble mean) and GRACE-based monthly TWS deviation from the mean for the GRACE period (2002–2016). Model results for the 2002–2005 period are taken from the historical simulations (see Supplementary Table 2), and for 2006–2016 from RCP2.6 runs (2005soc). Anomalies are calculated by using the mean for 2002–2016 period for both model results and GRACE data. Note that we use the simple ensemble average (not the weighted mean) for these comparisons to provide an unbiased evaluation of the models and to ensure that the model-GRACE agreement is not a result of the weighting that is based on the GRACE data. The results from RCP6.0 (not shown) are almost identical to that shown here. GRACE data shown are the mean of mascon products⁷⁶ from two processing centers: the Center for Space Research (CSR) at the University of Texas at Austin (http://www2.csr.utexas.edu/grace/) and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL; https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/GRACE).