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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ESSDD</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Earth System Science Data Discussions</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ESSDD</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">1866-3591</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name></publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/essd-2025-737</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Long-term irrigation water use datasets from multiple Earth Observation-based methods in major irrigated regions</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Laluet</surname>
<given-names>Pierre</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dari</surname>
<given-names>Jacopo</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2740-5270</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Busschaert</surname>
<given-names>Louise</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8805-7305</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Heyvaert</surname>
<given-names>Zdenko</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9748-1124</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>De Lannoy</surname>
<given-names>Gabrielle</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Langhans</surname>
<given-names>Pia</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0009-3559-173X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Modanesi</surname>
<given-names>Sara</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4720-5233</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Massari</surname>
<given-names>Christian</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0983-1276</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Brocca</surname>
<given-names>Luca</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9080-260X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Saltalippi</surname>
<given-names>Carla</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Morbidelli</surname>
<given-names>Renato</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Albergel</surname>
<given-names>Clément</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1095-2702</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Dorigo</surname>
<given-names>Wouter</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8054-7572</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, National Research Council, Perugia, Italy</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>European Space Agency Climate Office, ECSAT, Didcot, UK</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>29</day>
<month>01</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>30</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Pierre Laluet et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-737/">This article is available from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-737/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-737/essd-2025-737.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2025-737/essd-2025-737.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Irrigation water use (IWU) is the largest direct human intervention in the terrestrial water cycle, yet it remains poorly characterized at the spatial and temporal scales required for climate research. We present a long-term archive of monthly IWU estimates at 0.25&amp;deg; spatial resolution for four major irrigated regions &amp;mdash; the contiguous United States (CONUS), India, the Murray&amp;ndash;Darling Basin in Australia, and the Ebro Basin in Spain &amp;mdash; spanning up to two decades depending on input data availability. The datasets are derived using three distinct approaches: (i) a Soil Moisture (SM)&amp;ndash;based Delta method that infers irrigation from discrepancies between satellite and model SM and evapotranspiration, (ii) an SM&amp;ndash;based inversion of the soil water balance constrained by satellite SM, and (iii) a model&amp;ndash;observation integration scheme combining a land surface model with satellite-based irrigated-area maps. Across regions, these approaches yield up to six SM-based Delta products, five SM-based Inversion products, and one Model&amp;ndash;observation integration product. Validation against available irrigation records shows that several method&amp;ndash;input combinations reproduce the order of magnitude of annual state-level irrigation volumes in the CONUS, with typical errors for the best-performing datasets of about 4&amp;ndash;5 km&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; yr&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;1&lt;/sup&gt; in root mean square deviation and 1&amp;ndash;2 km&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; yr&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;1&lt;/sup&gt; in bias. In the Murray&amp;ndash;Darling and Ebro basins, the products capture the main features of the seasonal irrigation cycle, with variations in spatial patterns, magnitude, and timing across methods. In India, where no observational records are available, the datasets reproduce the expected agricultural seasons while exhibiting a wider inter-method spread. This coordinated dataset collection, produced with multiple Earth Observation-based approaches and harmonized inputs across regions, provides long-term, spatially explicit IWU estimates and a basis for better quantifying and representing irrigation in large-scale hydrological and climate studies. The complete archive of datasets is freely available at &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14988197&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14988197&lt;/a&gt; (Laluet et al., 2025b).</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="30"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>European Space Agency</funding-source>
<award-id>Contract number 4000142449/23/I-NB</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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