<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="data-paper" specific-use="SMUR" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<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-2026-282</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>A physically guided deep learning reconstruction of terrestrial water storage anomalies at 0.1&amp;deg; across China</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Xueying</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0910-1954</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>Sun</surname>
<given-names>Yan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2271-252X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Gu</surname>
<given-names>Xihui</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1924-9282</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>Wanders</surname>
<given-names>Niko</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7102-5454</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>Scanlon</surname>
<given-names>Bridget R.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Slater</surname>
<given-names>Louise J.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9416-488X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>School of Geography and Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>09</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>27</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Xueying Li 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-2026-282/">This article is available from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-282/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-282/essd-2026-282.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-282/essd-2026-282.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Terrestrial water storage (TWS), comprising all surface and subsurface water components, is a key indicator of water availability. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission provides large-scale estimates of TWS anomalies (TWSA), but its coarse spatial resolution (3&amp;deg;, approximately 300 km) limits the analysis of hydrologic processes at sub-regional scales. Using a physically-guided deep learning framework, we downscale TWSA from the original 3&amp;deg; GRACE mascons to 0.1&amp;deg; (approximately 10 km) across China, generating a standard version (2002&amp;ndash;2019) with comprehensive observations used for model constraints and independent evaluation and an extended version (2020&amp;ndash;2023) to support more recent hydrologic analyses. The downscaled TWSA preserves large-scale GRACE signals at the 3&amp;deg; grid scale (median correlation coefficient (&lt;em&gt;CC&lt;/em&gt;): 0.95; root-mean-square error (&lt;em&gt;RMSE&lt;/em&gt;): 1.38 cm) and basin scale (median &lt;em&gt;CC&lt;/em&gt;: 0.94; &lt;em&gt;RMSE&lt;/em&gt;: 1.72 cm), with a low median uncertainty (0.88 cm) across China. Its reliability is supported by high consistency with physically informed TWSA spatial patterns at the 0.1&amp;deg; resolution (median &lt;em&gt;CC&lt;/em&gt;: 0.91) and internally consistent water balance closure beyond the native GRACE resolution (median &lt;em&gt;CC&lt;/em&gt;: 0.80; &lt;em&gt;RMSE&lt;/em&gt;: 1.44 cm). Evaluation against independent observations demonstrates that the downscaled TWSA agrees well with groundwater variations in intensively irrigated regions (&lt;em&gt;CC&lt;/em&gt;: 0.65 for irrigation intensity &amp;gt; 50 %) and annual glacier elevation change in cryospheric areas (&lt;em&gt;CC&lt;/em&gt;: 0.97). The datasets improve fine-scale characterization of TWS variability and associated hydrologic processes in China, and can be used as a reference for evaluating performance of high-resolution hydrologic models. The two versions of the dataset are available at &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19502906&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19502906&lt;/a&gt;.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="27"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>UK Research and Innovation</funding-source>
<award-id>EP/Z002729/1</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>