Climate aridity amplifies global riverine nitrate beyond human inputs

Nitrate pollution is widely perceived as a signature of human inputs. Here we show, with machine-learning reconstructed global maps, that climate aridity is also a dominant driver, systematically elevating nitrate concentrations across land-use gradients and creating unexpected hotspots beyond major agricultural and urban centers. Across ~2.9 million river segments worldwide, nitrate concentrations exceed ecological and health thresholds across ~33 and 2% of global land area, affecting ~5.6 billion (73%) and 0.5 billion (6%) people, respectively. Ecological threshold exceedance occurs mostly in headwaters, and about half of the health threshold exceedance occurs in middle-income countries and sparsely populated landscapes. These findings cast nitrate pollution as an aridity-amplified risk, suggesting that aridification may increase nitrate exposure even without additional human inputs. They call for regulatory standards that reflect risks across broad concentration ranges.