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The role of tropical lakes and reservoirs in the global carbon cycle has received increasing attention in the past decade, but our understanding of its variability is still limited. The metabolism of tropical systems may differ profoundly from temperate systems due to the higher temperatures and wider variations in precipitation. Here, we investigated the spatial and temporal patterns of the variability in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO(2)) and its drivers in a set of 102 low-latitude lakes and reservoirs that encompass wide gradients of precipitation, productivity and landscape properties (lake area, perimeter-to-area ratio, catchment size, catchment area-to lake area ratio, and types of catchment land use). We used multiple regressions and structural equation modeling (SEM) to determine the direct and indirect effects of the main in-lake variables and landscape properties on the water pCO(2) variance. We found that these systems were mostly supersaturated with CO2 (92% spatially and 72% seasonally) regardless of their trophic status and landscape properties. The pCO(2) values (9-40,020 mu atm) were within the range found in tropical ecosystems, and higher (p < 0.005) than pCO(2) values recorded from high latitude ecosystems. Water volume had a negative effect on the trophic state (r = -0.63), which mediated a positive indirect effect on pCO(2) (r = 0.4), representing an important negative feedback in the context of climate change-driven reduction in precipitation. Our results demonstrated that precipitation drives the pCO(2) seasonal variability, with significantly higher pCO(2) during the rainy season (F = 16.67; p < 0.001), clue to two potential main mechanisms: (1) phytoplankton dilution and (2) increasing inputs of terrestrial CO2 from the catchment. We conclude that at low latitudes, precipitation is a major climatic driver of pCO(2) variability by influencing volume variations and linking lentic ecosystems to their catchments. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.