Radar rain data enable for the first time portraying the erosivity pattern with high spatial and temporal resolution. This allowed quantification of erosivity in Germany with unprecedented detail. Compared to previous estimates, erosivity has strongly increased and its seasonal distribution has changed, presumably due to climate change. As a consequence, erosion for some crops is 4 times higher than previously estimated.

We project 21st century change and uncertainty in 25 river flow regime metrics (signatures) for a deglaciating river basin. The results show that glacier-fed river flow magnitude, timing and variability are sensitive to climate change and that projection uncertainty stems from incomplete understanding of future climate and glacier-hydrology processes. These findings indicate how impact studies can be better designed to provide more robust projections of river flow regime in glaciated basins.

Midwinter melts are often an overlooked factor in hydrological processes in the cold regions. The present paper highlights the effect of melt timing on energy balance and discusses how midwinter melts affect streamflows and groundwater recharge.

The study focuses on the solute export from rivers with the purpose of discerning the impacts of anthropic activities and catchment characteristics on water quality. The results revealed a more detectable impact of the anthropic activities than of the catchment characteristics. The solute export follows different dynamics depending on catchment characteristics and mainly on solute-specific properties. The export modality is consistent across different catchments only for a minority of solutes.

Season-ahead rainfall forecast is very important for water resource management. Classification methods are used to identify the extreme rainfall classes dry and wet using climate teleconnections. These models can be used for river basin areal rainfall forecast and water resources and power generation planning for climate uncertainty. Water resource management decisions are informed by forecasts of El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean Dipole phenomena.

Drought is a natural disaster that can result from changes to temperature, precipitation and/or vegetation. Here we apply a high-resolution computer model to explore the relative importance of each factor on the North American High Plains, one of the most important agricultural regions of the USA. Decreased precipitation caused larger changes in hydrologic variables (evapotranspiration, soil moisture, stream flow and water table levels) than increased temperature or disturbed vegetation did.

This work investigates different model types for drought prediction in a dryland region. Consequently, the performances of seasonal reservoir volume forecasts derived by a process-based and a statistical hydrological model were evaluated. The process-based approach obtained lower accuracy while resolution and reliability of drought prediction were comparable. Initialisation of the process-based model is worthwhile for more in-depth analyses, provided adequate rainfall forecasts are available.

This study investigates the propagation of precipitation uncertainty, and its interaction with hydrologic modeling, in global water resource reanalysis. Analysis is based on ensemble hydrologic simulations for a period of 11 years based on six global hydrologic models and five precipitation datasets. Results show that uncertainties in the model simulations are attributed to both uncertainty in precipitation forcing and the model structure.

Numerical models of wormhole formation in fractured porous media provide basic insights on the evolution of complex conduit systems in karst aquifers. In this work we use a time-propagating reactive flow model to explore the evolution of wormholes in a 2-D grid of fractures. We demonstrate physically meaningful mechanisms leading to the formation of individual wormholes and the competition between a set of evolving wormholes.

This paper synthesizes nearly three decades of eco-hydrological field and modelling studies at Scotty Creek, Northwest Territories, Canada, highlighting the key insights into the major water flux and storage processes operating within and between the major land cover types of this wetland-dominated region of discontinuous permafrost. It also examines the rate and pattern of permafrost-thaw-induced land cover change and how such changes will affect the hydrology and water resources of the region.

Hydrometric and geochemical dynamics are controlled by interplay of meteorological conditions, topography and geological heterogeneity. Nivo-meteorological indicators (such as global solar radiation, temperature and decreasing snow depth) explain monthly conductivity and isotopic dynamics best. These insights are important for better understanding hydrochemical responses of glacierized catchments under a changing cryosphere.

Measuring Earth's changing environment is a critical part of natural science, but to date most of the equipment to do so is expensive, proprietary, and difficult to customize. We addressed this challenge by developing and deploying the ALog, a low-power, lightweight, Arduino-compatible data logger. We present our hardware schematics and layouts, as well as our customizable code library that operates the ALog and helps users to link it to off-the-shelf sensors.

Satellite images are often used to estimate land water fluxes over a larger area. In this study, we investigate the link between a well-known vegetation index derived from satellite data and sap velocity, in a temperate forest in Luxembourg. We show that the link between the vegetation index and transpiration is not constant. Therefore we suggest that the use of vegetation indices to predict transpiration should be limited to ecosystems and scales where the link has been confirmed.

In this study, freshwater lake model simulation results, verified by satellite and buoy observation data, were used to quantify recent climate change effects on the thermal regime of the largest lake in China. Results indicate that the FLake model can reproduce the lake thermal pattern nicely. The lake surface is warming, while the lake bottom has no significant trend. Climate change also caused an earlier ice-off and later ice-on, leading to an obvious change in the energy balance of the lake.

The Dead Sea shore is a unique salt karst system. Development began in the 1960s, when the water resources that used to feed the Dead Sea were diverted. The water level is falling at more than 1 m yr⁻¹, causing a hydrostatic disequilibrium between the underground fresh water and the base level. Despite these conditions, tourism development projects have flourished. Here, we show that a 10 km long strip of coast that encompasses several resorts is exposed to subsidence, sinkholes and landslides.

Plant water sources of a beech riparian forest were monitored using stable isotopes. Isotopic fractionation during root water uptake is usually neglected but may be more common than previously accepted. Xylem water was always more depleted in δ²H than all sources considered, suggesting isotopic discrimination during water uptake or within plant tissues. Thus, the identification and quantification of tree water sources was affected. Still, oxygen isotopes were a good tracer of plant source water.

The uncertainty of hydrological models can be substantial, and its quantification and realistic description are often difficult. We propose a new flexible probabilistic framework to describe and quantify this uncertainty. It is show that the correlation of the errors can be non-stationary, and that accounting for temporal changes in correlation can lead to strongly improved probabilistic predictions. This is a promising avenue for improving uncertainty estimation in hydrological modelling.

Up to now, little has been known on ice thermodynamics and lake–atmosphere interaction over the Tibetan Plateau during ice-covered seasons due to a lack of field data. Here, model experiments on ice thermodynamics were conducted in a shallow lake using HIGHTSI. Water–ice heat flux was a major source of uncertainty for lake ice thickness. Heat and mass budgets were estimated within the vertical air–ice–water system. Strong ice sublimation occurred and was responsible for water loss during winter.

To constrain water fluxes in the subsurface capable of transporting contaminants we assessed the amount of water that moves from surface to groundwater on a plateau near Los Angeles. We found that on average only 16 mm (4 %) of precipitation becomes groundwater annually. However, values vary from 0 to >1000 mm yr⁻¹ due to topography, vegetation and surface geology. The flux is not steady over the year but happens episodically at the end of the wet season or after exceptional precipitation events.

New multi-species reactive models of the four-phase SWPP test were presented considering the wellbore storages for both groundwater flow and solute transport and a finite-aquifer hydraulic diffusivity, which were ignored in previous studies. The models of the wellbore storage for solute transport were proposed based on the mass balance, and the sensitivity analysis and uniqueness analysis were employed to investigate the assumptions used in previous studies on the parameter estimation.