The separate and combined effects of different drivers of change to water fluxes and resources on land (CWOL) remain difficult to distinguish and largely unknown, particularly at a global scale. Our study analyzes CWOL during the period 1901–2008, based on available hydroclimatic data for up to 859 hydrological basins. We develop a worldwide spectrum of change magnitudes and directions in Budyko space, from which we distinguish climate and landscape drivers of CWOL.