Articles | Volume 26, issue 12
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3079-2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3079-2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
20 Jun 2022
Research article |
| 20 Jun 2022
| 20 Jun 2022
Hydrological concept formation inside long short-term memory (LSTM) networks
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, United Kingdom
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
Steven Reece
Department of Engineering, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Frederik Kratzert
Google Research, Vienna, Austria
Daniel Klotz
LIT AI Lab & Institute for Machine Learning, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria
Martin Gauch
LIT AI Lab & Institute for Machine Learning, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria
Jens De Bruijn
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Reetik Kumar Sahu
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
Peter Greve
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
Louise Slater
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, United Kingdom
Simon J. Dadson
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, United Kingdom
UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Maclean Building, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, OX10 8BB, United Kingdom
Related authors
Thomas Lees, Marcus Buechel, Bailey Anderson, Louise Slater, Steven Reece, Gemma Coxon, and Simon J. Dadson
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 5517–5534, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-5517-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-5517-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
We used deep learning (DL) models to simulate the amount of water moving through a river channel (discharge) based on the rainfall, temperature and potential evaporation in the previous days. We tested the DL models on catchments across Great Britain finding that the model can accurately simulate hydrological systems across a variety of catchment conditions. Ultimately, the model struggled most in areas where there is chalky bedrock and where human influence on the catchment is large.
Louise J. Slater, Bailey Anderson, Marcus Buechel, Simon Dadson, Shasha Han, Shaun Harrigan, Timo Kelder, Katie Kowal, Thomas Lees, Tom Matthews, Conor Murphy, and Robert L. Wilby
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 3897–3935, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-3897-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-3897-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Weather and water extremes have devastating effects each year. One of the principal challenges for society is understanding how extremes are likely to evolve under the influence of changes in climate, land cover, and other human impacts. This paper provides a review of the methods and challenges associated with the detection, attribution, management, and projection of nonstationary weather and water extremes.
Jian Peng, Simon Dadson, Feyera Hirpa, Ellen Dyer, Thomas Lees, Diego G. Miralles, Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano, and Chris Funk
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 753–769, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-753-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-753-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
Africa has been severely influenced by intense drought events, which has led to crop failure, food shortages, famine, epidemics and even mass migration. The current study developed a high spatial resolution drought dataset entirely from satellite-based products. The dataset has been comprehensively inter-compared with other drought indicators and may contribute to an improved characterization of drought risk and vulnerability and minimize drought's impact on water and food security in Africa.
Maximillian Van Wyk de Vries, Alexandre Dunant, Amy L. Johnson, Erin L. Harvey, Sihan Li, Katherine Arrell, Jeevan Baniya, Dipak Basnet, Gopi K. Basyal, Nyima Dorjee Bhotia, Simon J. Dadson, Alexander L. Densmore, Tek Bahadur Dong, Mark E. Kincey, Katie Oven, Anuradha Puri, and Nick J. Rosser
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 1937–1942, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-1937-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-1937-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Mapping exposure to landslides is necessary to mitigate risk and reduce vulnerability. In this study, we show that there is a poor correlation between building damage and deaths from landslides, such that the deadliest landslides do not always destroy the most buildings and vice versa. This has important implications for our management of landslide risk.
Simon Moulds, Louise Slater, Louise Arnal, and Andrew W. Wood
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2393–2406, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2393-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2393-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Seasonal streamflow forecasts are an important component of flood risk management. Here, we train and test a machine learning model to predict the monthly maximum daily streamflow up to 4 months ahead. We train the model on precipitation and temperature forecasts to produce probabilistic hindcasts for 579 stations across the UK for the period 2004–2016. We show skilful results up to 4 months ahead in many locations, although, in general, the skill declines with increasing lead time.
Emma Ford, Manuela I. Brunner, Hannah Christensen, and Louise Slater
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1493, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1493, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS).
Short summary
Short summary
This study aims to improve prediction and understanding of extreme flood events in UK near-natural catchments. We develop a machine learning framework to assess the contribution of different features to flood magnitude estimation. We find weather patterns are weak predictors and stress the importance of evaluating model performance across and within catchments.
Martin Gauch, Frederik Kratzert, Daniel Klotz, Grey Nearing, Deborah Cohen, and Oren Gilon
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1224, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1224, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS).
Short summary
Short summary
Missing input data are one of the most common challenges when building deep learning hydrological models. We present and analyze different methods that can produce predictions when certain inputs are missing during training or inference. Our proposed strategies provide high accuracy while allowing for more flexible data handling and being robust to outages in operational scenarios.
Eduardo Acuña Espinoza, Frederik Kratzert, Daniel Klotz, Martin Gauch, Manuel Álvarez Chaves, Ralf Loritz, and Uwe Ehret
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1749–1758, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1749-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1749-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Long short-term memory (LSTM) networks have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance for rainfall-runoff hydrological modelling. However, most studies focus on predictions at a daily scale, limiting the benefits of sub-daily (e.g. hourly) predictions in applications like flood forecasting. In this study, we introduce a new architecture, multi-frequency LSTM (MF-LSTM), designed to use inputs of various temporal frequencies to produce sub-daily (e.g. hourly) predictions at a moderate computational cost.
Eduardo Acuña Espinoza, Ralf Loritz, Frederik Kratzert, Daniel Klotz, Martin Gauch, Manuel Álvarez Chaves, and Uwe Ehret
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1277–1294, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1277-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1277-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Data-driven techniques have shown the potential to outperform process-based models in rainfall–runoff simulations. Hybrid models, combining both approaches, aim to enhance accuracy and maintain interpretability. Expanding the set of test cases to evaluate hybrid models under different conditions, we test their generalization capabilities for extreme hydrological events.
Sanika Baste, Daniel Klotz, Eduardo Acuña Espinoza, Andras Bardossy, and Ralf Loritz
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-425, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-425, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
This study evaluates the extrapolation performance of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks in rainfall-runoff modeling, specifically under extreme conditions. The findings reveal that the LSTM cannot predict discharge values beyond a theoretical limit, which is well below the extremity of its training data. This behavior results from the LSTM's gating structures rather than saturation of cell states alone.
Alexandre Dunant, Tom R. Robinson, Alexander L. Densmore, Nick J. Rosser, Ragindra Man Rajbhandari, Mark Kincey, Sihan Li, Prem Raj Awasthi, Max Van Wyk de Vries, Ramesh Guragain, Erin Harvey, and Simon Dadson
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 267–285, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-267-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-267-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Natural hazards like earthquakes often trigger other disasters, such as landslides, creating complex chains of impacts. We developed a risk model using a mathematical approach called hypergraphs to efficiently measure the impact of interconnected hazards. We showed that it can predict broad patterns of damage to buildings and roads from the 2015 Nepal earthquake. The model's efficiency allows it to generate multiple disaster scenarios, even at a national scale, to support preparedness plans.
Daniel Klotz, Peter Miersch, Thiago V. M. do Nascimento, Fabrizio Fenicia, Martin Gauch, and Jakob Zscheischler
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-450, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-450, 2025
Revised manuscript under review for ESSD
Short summary
Short summary
Data availability is central to hydrological science. It is the basis for advancing our understanding of hydrological processes, building prediction models, and anticipatory water management. We present a data-driven daily runoff reconstruction product for natural streamflow. We name it EARLS: European aggregated reconstruction for large-sample studies. The reconstructions represent daily simulations of natural streamflow across Europe and cover the period from 1953 to 2020.
Taher Kahil, Safa Baccour, Julian Joseph, Reetik Sahu, Peter Burek, Jia Yi Ng, Samar Asad, Dor Fridman, Jose Albiac, Frank A. Ward, and Yoshihide Wada
Geosci. Model Dev. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-238, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-238, 2024
Preprint under review for GMD
Short summary
Short summary
This study presents the development of the global version of the ECHO hydro-economic model for assessing the economic and environmental performance of water management options. This improved version covers a large number of basins worldwide, includes a detailed representation of irrigated agriculture, and accounts for economic benefits and costs of water use. Results of this study demonstrates the capacity of the model to address emerging water-related research and practical questions.
Claudia Färber, Henning Plessow, Simon Mischel, Frederik Kratzert, Nans Addor, Guy Shalev, and Ulrich Looser
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-427, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-427, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for ESSD
Short summary
Short summary
Large-sample datasets are essential in hydrological science to support modelling studies and advance process understanding. Caravan is a community initiative to create a large-sample hydrology dataset of meteorological forcing data, catchment attributes, and discharge data for catchments around the world. This dataset is a subset of hydrological discharge data and station-based watersheds from the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC), which are covered by an open data policy.
Dapeng Feng, Hylke Beck, Jens de Bruijn, Reetik Kumar Sahu, Yusuke Satoh, Yoshihide Wada, Jiangtao Liu, Ming Pan, Kathryn Lawson, and Chaopeng Shen
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 7181–7198, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-7181-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-7181-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Accurate hydrologic modeling is vital to characterizing water cycle responses to climate change. For the first time at this scale, we use differentiable physics-informed machine learning hydrologic models to simulate rainfall–runoff processes for 3753 basins around the world and compare them with purely data-driven and traditional modeling approaches. This sets a benchmark for hydrologic estimates around the world and builds foundations for improving global hydrologic simulations.
Frederik Kratzert, Martin Gauch, Daniel Klotz, and Grey Nearing
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4187–4201, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4187-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4187-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Recently, a special type of neural-network architecture became increasingly popular in hydrology literature. However, in most applications, this model was applied as a one-to-one replacement for hydrology models without adapting or rethinking the experimental setup. In this opinion paper, we show how this is almost always a bad decision and how using these kinds of models requires the use of large-sample hydrology data sets.
Andreas Auer, Martin Gauch, Frederik Kratzert, Grey Nearing, Sepp Hochreiter, and Daniel Klotz
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4099–4126, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4099-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4099-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This work examines the impact of temporal and spatial information on the uncertainty estimation of streamflow forecasts. The study emphasizes the importance of data updates and global information for precise uncertainty estimates. We use conformal prediction to show that recent data enhance the estimates, even if only available infrequently. Local data yield reasonable average estimations but fall short for peak-flow events. The use of global data significantly improves these predictions.
Daniel Klotz, Martin Gauch, Frederik Kratzert, Grey Nearing, and Jakob Zscheischler
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3665–3673, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3665-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3665-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The evaluation of model performance is essential for hydrological modeling. Using performance criteria requires a deep understanding of their properties. We focus on a counterintuitive aspect of the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and show that if we divide the data into multiple parts, the overall performance can be higher than all the evaluations of the subsets. Although this follows from the definition of the NSE, the resulting behavior can have unintended consequences in practice.
Rutong Liu, Jiabo Yin, Louise Slater, Shengyu Kang, Yuanhang Yang, Pan Liu, Jiali Guo, Xihui Gu, Xiang Zhang, and Aliaksandr Volchak
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3305–3326, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3305-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3305-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Climate change accelerates the water cycle and alters the spatiotemporal distribution of hydrological variables, thus complicating the projection of future streamflow and hydrological droughts. We develop a cascade modeling chain to project future bivariate hydrological drought characteristics over China, using five bias-corrected global climate model outputs under three shared socioeconomic pathways, five hydrological models, and a deep-learning model.
Solomon H. Gebrechorkos, Julian Leyland, Simon J. Dadson, Sagy Cohen, Louise Slater, Michel Wortmann, Philip J. Ashworth, Georgina L. Bennett, Richard Boothroyd, Hannah Cloke, Pauline Delorme, Helen Griffith, Richard Hardy, Laurence Hawker, Stuart McLelland, Jeffrey Neal, Andrew Nicholas, Andrew J. Tatem, Ellie Vahidi, Yinxue Liu, Justin Sheffield, Daniel R. Parsons, and Stephen E. Darby
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3099–3118, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3099-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3099-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This study evaluated six high-resolution global precipitation datasets for hydrological modelling. MSWEP and ERA5 showed better performance, but spatial variability was high. The findings highlight the importance of careful dataset selection for river discharge modelling due to the lack of a universally superior dataset. Further improvements in global precipitation data products are needed.
Marcus Buechel, Louise Slater, and Simon Dadson
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 2081–2105, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2081-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2081-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Afforestation has been proposed internationally, but the hydrological implications of such large increases in the spatial extent of woodland are not fully understood. In this study, we use a land surface model to simulate hydrology across Great Britain with realistic afforestation scenarios and potential climate changes. Countrywide afforestation minimally influences hydrology, when compared to climate change, and reduces low streamflow whilst not lowering the highest flows.
Moctar Dembélé, Mathieu Vrac, Natalie Ceperley, Sander J. Zwart, Josh Larsen, Simon J. Dadson, Grégoire Mariéthoz, and Bettina Schaefli
Proc. IAHS, 385, 121–127, https://doi.org/10.5194/piahs-385-121-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/piahs-385-121-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This study assesses the impact of climate change on the timing, seasonality and magnitude of mean annual minimum (MAM) flows and annual maximum flows (AMF) in the Volta River basin (VRB). Several climate change projection data are use to simulate river flow under multiple greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Future projections show that AMF could increase with various magnitude but negligible shift in time across the VRB, while MAM could decrease with up to 14 days of delay in occurrence.
Bailey J. Anderson, Manuela I. Brunner, Louise J. Slater, and Simon J. Dadson
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 1567–1583, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-1567-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-1567-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Elasticityrefers to how much the amount of water in a river changes with precipitation. We usually calculate this using average streamflow values; however, the amount of water within rivers is also dependent on stored water sources. Here, we look at how elasticity varies across the streamflow distribution and show that not only do low and high streamflows respond differently to precipitation change, but also these differences vary with water storage availability.
Maximillian Van Wyk de Vries, Sihan Li, Katherine Arrell, Jeevan Baniya, Dipak Basnet, Gopi K. Basyal, Nyima Dorjee Bhotia, Alexander L. Densmore, Tek Bahadur Dong, Alexandre Dunant, Erin L. Harvey, Ganesh K. Jimee, Mark E. Kincey, Katie Oven, Sarmila Paudyal, Dammar Singh Pujara, Anuradha Puri, Ram Shrestha, Nick J. Rosser, and Simon J. Dadson
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-397, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-397, 2024
Preprint archived
Short summary
Short summary
This study focuses on understanding soil moisture, a key factor for evaluating hillslope stability and landsliding. In Nepal, where landslides are common, we used a computer model to better understand how rapidly soil dries out after the monsoon season. We calibrated the model using field data and found that, by adjusting soil properties, we could predict moisture levels more accurately. This helps understand where landslides might occur, even where direct measurements are not possible.
Jiabo Yin, Louise J. Slater, Abdou Khouakhi, Le Yu, Pan Liu, Fupeng Li, Yadu Pokhrel, and Pierre Gentine
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5597–5615, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5597-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5597-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
This study presents long-term (i.e., 1940–2022) and high-resolution (i.e., 0.25°) monthly time series of TWS anomalies over the global land surface. The reconstruction is achieved by using a set of machine learning models with a large number of predictors, including climatic and hydrological variables, land use/land cover data, and vegetation indicators (e.g., leaf area index). Our proposed GTWS-MLrec performs overall as well as, or is more reliable than, previous TWS datasets.
Solomon H. Gebrechorkos, Jian Peng, Ellen Dyer, Diego G. Miralles, Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano, Chris Funk, Hylke E. Beck, Dagmawi T. Asfaw, Michael B. Singer, and Simon J. Dadson
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5449–5466, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5449-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5449-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Drought is undeniably one of the most intricate and significant natural hazards with far-reaching consequences for the environment, economy, water resources, agriculture, and societies across the globe. In response to this challenge, we have devised high-resolution drought indices. These indices serve as invaluable indicators for assessing shifts in drought patterns and their associated impacts on a global, regional, and local level facilitating the development of tailored adaptation strategies.
Louise J. Slater, Louise Arnal, Marie-Amélie Boucher, Annie Y.-Y. Chang, Simon Moulds, Conor Murphy, Grey Nearing, Guy Shalev, Chaopeng Shen, Linda Speight, Gabriele Villarini, Robert L. Wilby, Andrew Wood, and Massimiliano Zappa
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 1865–1889, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1865-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-1865-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Hybrid forecasting systems combine data-driven methods with physics-based weather and climate models to improve the accuracy of predictions for meteorological and hydroclimatic events such as rainfall, temperature, streamflow, floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, or atmospheric rivers. We review recent developments in hybrid forecasting and outline key challenges and opportunities in the field.
Grey S. Nearing, Daniel Klotz, Jonathan M. Frame, Martin Gauch, Oren Gilon, Frederik Kratzert, Alden Keefe Sampson, Guy Shalev, and Sella Nevo
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 5493–5513, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5493-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-5493-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
When designing flood forecasting models, it is necessary to use all available data to achieve the most accurate predictions possible. This manuscript explores two basic ways of ingesting near-real-time streamflow data into machine learning streamflow models. The point we want to make is that when working in the context of machine learning (instead of traditional hydrology models that are based on
bio-geophysics), it is not necessary to use complex statistical methods for injecting sparse data.
Louise J. Slater, Chris Huntingford, Richard F. Pywell, John W. Redhead, and Elizabeth J. Kendon
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1377–1396, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1377-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1377-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
This work considers how wheat yields are affected by weather conditions during the three main wheat growth stages in the UK. Impacts are strongest in years with compound weather extremes across multiple growth stages. Future climate projections are beneficial for wheat yields, on average, but indicate a high risk of unseen weather conditions which farmers may struggle to adapt to and mitigate against.
Luca Guillaumot, Mikhail Smilovic, Peter Burek, Jens de Bruijn, Peter Greve, Taher Kahil, and Yoshihide Wada
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 7099–7120, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-7099-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-7099-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
We develop and test the first large-scale hydrological model at regional scale with a very high spatial resolution that includes a water management and groundwater flow model. This study infers the impact of surface and groundwater-based irrigation on groundwater recharge and on evapotranspiration in both irrigated and non-irrigated areas. We argue that water table recorded in boreholes can be used as validation data if water management is well implemented and spatial resolution is ≤ 100 m.
Sella Nevo, Efrat Morin, Adi Gerzi Rosenthal, Asher Metzger, Chen Barshai, Dana Weitzner, Dafi Voloshin, Frederik Kratzert, Gal Elidan, Gideon Dror, Gregory Begelman, Grey Nearing, Guy Shalev, Hila Noga, Ira Shavitt, Liora Yuklea, Moriah Royz, Niv Giladi, Nofar Peled Levi, Ofir Reich, Oren Gilon, Ronnie Maor, Shahar Timnat, Tal Shechter, Vladimir Anisimov, Yotam Gigi, Yuval Levin, Zach Moshe, Zvika Ben-Haim, Avinatan Hassidim, and Yossi Matias
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 4013–4032, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-4013-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-4013-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Early flood warnings are one of the most effective tools to save lives and goods. Machine learning (ML) models can improve flood prediction accuracy but their use in operational frameworks is limited. The paper presents a flood warning system, operational in India and Bangladesh, that uses ML models for forecasting river stage and flood inundation maps and discusses the models' performances. In 2021, more than 100 million flood alerts were sent to people near rivers over an area of 470 000 km2.
Juliane Mai, Hongren Shen, Bryan A. Tolson, Étienne Gaborit, Richard Arsenault, James R. Craig, Vincent Fortin, Lauren M. Fry, Martin Gauch, Daniel Klotz, Frederik Kratzert, Nicole O'Brien, Daniel G. Princz, Sinan Rasiya Koya, Tirthankar Roy, Frank Seglenieks, Narayan K. Shrestha, André G. T. Temgoua, Vincent Vionnet, and Jonathan W. Waddell
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 3537–3572, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3537-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3537-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Model intercomparison studies are carried out to test various models and compare the quality of their outputs over the same domain. In this study, 13 diverse model setups using the same input data are evaluated over the Great Lakes region. Various model outputs – such as streamflow, evaporation, soil moisture, and amount of snow on the ground – are compared using standardized methods and metrics. The basin-wise model outputs and observations are made available through an interactive website.
Jonathan M. Frame, Frederik Kratzert, Daniel Klotz, Martin Gauch, Guy Shalev, Oren Gilon, Logan M. Qualls, Hoshin V. Gupta, and Grey S. Nearing
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 3377–3392, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3377-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3377-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
The most accurate rainfall–runoff predictions are currently based on deep learning. There is a concern among hydrologists that deep learning models may not be reliable in extrapolation or for predicting extreme events. This study tests that hypothesis. The deep learning models remained relatively accurate in predicting extreme events compared with traditional models, even when extreme events were not included in the training set.
Daniel Klotz, Frederik Kratzert, Martin Gauch, Alden Keefe Sampson, Johannes Brandstetter, Günter Klambauer, Sepp Hochreiter, and Grey Nearing
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 1673–1693, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-1673-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-1673-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
This contribution evaluates distributional runoff predictions from deep-learning-based approaches. We propose a benchmarking setup and establish four strong baselines. The results show that accurate, precise, and reliable uncertainty estimation can be achieved with deep learning.
Moctar Dembélé, Mathieu Vrac, Natalie Ceperley, Sander J. Zwart, Josh Larsen, Simon J. Dadson, Grégoire Mariéthoz, and Bettina Schaefli
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 1481–1506, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-1481-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-1481-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Climate change impacts on water resources in the Volta River basin are investigated under various global warming scenarios. Results reveal contrasting changes in future hydrological processes and water availability, depending on greenhouse gas emission scenarios, with implications for floods and drought occurrence over the 21st century. These findings provide insights for the elaboration of regional adaptation and mitigation strategies for climate change.
Manuela I. Brunner and Louise J. Slater
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 469–482, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-469-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-469-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Assessing the rarity and magnitude of very extreme flood events occurring less than twice a century is challenging due to the lack of observations of such rare events. Here we develop a new approach, pooling reforecast ensemble members from the European Flood Awareness System to increase the sample size available to estimate the frequency of extreme flood events. We demonstrate that such ensemble pooling produces more robust estimates than observation-based estimates.
Thomas Lees, Marcus Buechel, Bailey Anderson, Louise Slater, Steven Reece, Gemma Coxon, and Simon J. Dadson
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 5517–5534, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-5517-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-5517-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
We used deep learning (DL) models to simulate the amount of water moving through a river channel (discharge) based on the rainfall, temperature and potential evaporation in the previous days. We tested the DL models on catchments across Great Britain finding that the model can accurately simulate hydrological systems across a variety of catchment conditions. Ultimately, the model struggled most in areas where there is chalky bedrock and where human influence on the catchment is large.
Louise J. Slater, Bailey Anderson, Marcus Buechel, Simon Dadson, Shasha Han, Shaun Harrigan, Timo Kelder, Katie Kowal, Thomas Lees, Tom Matthews, Conor Murphy, and Robert L. Wilby
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 3897–3935, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-3897-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-3897-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Weather and water extremes have devastating effects each year. One of the principal challenges for society is understanding how extremes are likely to evolve under the influence of changes in climate, land cover, and other human impacts. This paper provides a review of the methods and challenges associated with the detection, attribution, management, and projection of nonstationary weather and water extremes.
Frederik Kratzert, Daniel Klotz, Sepp Hochreiter, and Grey S. Nearing
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 2685–2703, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2685-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2685-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
We investigate how deep learning models use different meteorological data sets in the task of (regional) rainfall–runoff modeling. We show that performance can be significantly improved when using different data products as input and further show how the model learns to combine those meteorological input differently across time and space. The results are carefully benchmarked against classical approaches, showing the supremacy of the presented approach.
Martin Gauch, Frederik Kratzert, Daniel Klotz, Grey Nearing, Jimmy Lin, and Sepp Hochreiter
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 2045–2062, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2045-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2045-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
We present multi-timescale Short-Term Memory (MTS-LSTM), a machine learning approach that predicts discharge at multiple timescales within one model. MTS-LSTM is significantly more accurate than the US National Water Model and computationally more efficient than an individual LSTM model per timescale. Further, MTS-LSTM can process different input variables at different timescales, which is important as the lead time of meteorological forecasts often depends on their temporal resolution.
Peter Burek, Yusuke Satoh, Taher Kahil, Ting Tang, Peter Greve, Mikhail Smilovic, Luca Guillaumot, Fang Zhao, and Yoshihide Wada
Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 3267–3298, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-3267-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-3267-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
We present the new global hydrological model "Community Water Model" (CWatM), which can be used globally and regionally. The model is open source and written with the Python programming language. It uses global, freely available data in a smart and state-of-the-art format. It includes the major hydrological processes but also takes into account human activities, such as water use and reservoir regulation, by calculating water demand from the agriculture, domestic, and industrial sectors.
Jian Peng, Simon Dadson, Feyera Hirpa, Ellen Dyer, Thomas Lees, Diego G. Miralles, Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano, and Chris Funk
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 753–769, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-753-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-753-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
Africa has been severely influenced by intense drought events, which has led to crop failure, food shortages, famine, epidemics and even mass migration. The current study developed a high spatial resolution drought dataset entirely from satellite-based products. The dataset has been comprehensively inter-compared with other drought indicators and may contribute to an improved characterization of drought risk and vulnerability and minimize drought's impact on water and food security in Africa.
Frederik Kratzert, Daniel Klotz, Guy Shalev, Günter Klambauer, Sepp Hochreiter, and Grey Nearing
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 5089–5110, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5089-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5089-2019, 2019
Short summary
Short summary
A new approach for regional rainfall–runoff modeling using long short-term memory (LSTM)-based models is presented and benchmarked against a range of well-known hydrological models. The approach significantly outperforms regionally calibrated hydrological models but also basin-wise calibrated models. Furthermore, we propose an adaption of the LSTM that allows us to extract the learned catchment understanding of the model and show that it matches our hydrology expert knowledge.
Louise J. Slater, Guillaume Thirel, Shaun Harrigan, Olivier Delaigue, Alexander Hurley, Abdou Khouakhi, Ilaria Prosdocimi, Claudia Vitolo, and Katie Smith
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 2939–2963, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2939-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2939-2019, 2019
Short summary
Short summary
This paper explores the benefits and advantages of R's usage in hydrology. We provide an overview of a typical hydrological workflow based on reproducible principles and packages for retrieval of hydro-meteorological data, spatial analysis, hydrological modelling, statistics, and the design of static and dynamic visualizations and documents. We discuss some of the challenges that arise when using R in hydrology as well as a roadmap for R’s future within the discipline.
John K. Hillier, Geoffrey R. Saville, Mike J. Smith, Alister J. Scott, Emma K. Raven, Jonathon Gascoigne, Louise J. Slater, Nevil Quinn, Andreas Tsanakas, Claire Souch, Gregor C. Leckebusch, Neil Macdonald, Alice M. Milner, Jennifer Loxton, Rebecca Wilebore, Alexandra Collins, Colin MacKechnie, Jaqui Tweddle, Sarah Moller, MacKenzie Dove, Harry Langford, and Jim Craig
Geosci. Commun., 2, 1–23, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2-1-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2-1-2019, 2019
Short summary
Short summary
Worldwide there is intense interest in converting research excellence in universities into commercial success, but there has been scant attention devoted to exactly how individual scientists' workload and incentive structures may be a key barrier to this. Our work reveals the real challenge posed by a time-constrained university culture, better describes how work with business might fit into an academic job, and gives tips on working together in an
user guidefor scientists and (re)insurers.
Frederik Kratzert, Daniel Klotz, Claire Brenner, Karsten Schulz, and Mathew Herrnegger
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 6005–6022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-6005-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-6005-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
In this paper, we propose a novel data-driven approach for
rainfall–runoff modelling, using the long short-term memory (LSTM) network, a special type of recurrent neural network. We show in three different experiments that this network is able to learn to predict the discharge purely from meteorological input parameters (such as precipitation or temperature) as accurately as (or better than) the well-established Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting model, coupled with the Snow-17 snow model.
Stefanie R. Lutz, Andrea Popp, Tim van Emmerik, Tom Gleeson, Liz Kalaugher, Karsten Möbius, Tonie Mudde, Brett Walton, Rolf Hut, Hubert Savenije, Louise J. Slater, Anna Solcerova, Cathelijne R. Stoof, and Matthias Zink
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 3589–3599, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-3589-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-3589-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
Media play a key role in the communication between scientists and the general public. However, the interaction between scientists and journalists is not always straightforward. In this opinion paper, we present insights from hydrologists and journalists into the benefits, aftermath and potential pitfalls of science–media interaction. We aim to encourage scientists to participate in the diverse and evolving media landscape, and we call on the scientific community to support scientists who do so.
Karsten Schulz, Reinhard Burgholzer, Daniel Klotz, Johannes Wesemann, and Mathew Herrnegger
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 2607–2613, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-2607-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-2607-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
The unit hydrograph has been one of the most widely employed modelling techniques to predict rainfall-runoff behaviour of hydrological catchments. We developed a lecture theatre experiment including some student involvement to illustrate the principles behind this modelling technique. The experiment only uses very simple and cheap material including a set of plastic balls (representing rainfall), magnetic stripes (tacking the balls to the white board) and sieves (for ball/water gauging).
Peter Greve, Lukas Gudmundsson, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Earth Syst. Dynam., 9, 227–240, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-227-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-227-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
Assessing projected hydroclimatological changes is crucial, but associated with large uncertainties. We statistically assess here the response of precipitation and water availability to global temperature change, enabling us to estimate the significance of drying/wetting tendencies under anthropogenic climate change. We further show that opting for a 1.5 K warming target just slightly influences the mean response but could substantially reduce the risk of experiencing extreme changes.
Benoit P. Guillod, Richard G. Jones, Simon J. Dadson, Gemma Coxon, Gianbattista Bussi, James Freer, Alison L. Kay, Neil R. Massey, Sarah N. Sparrow, David C. H. Wallom, Myles R. Allen, and Jim W. Hall
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 611–634, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-611-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-611-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
Assessing the potential impacts of extreme events such as drought and flood requires large datasets of such events, especially when looking at the most severe and rare events. Using a state-of-the-art climate modelling infrastructure that is simulating large numbers of weather time series on volunteers' computers, we generate such a large dataset for the United Kingdom. The dataset covers the recent past (1900–2006) as well as two future time periods (2030s and 2080s).
Huw W. Lewis, Juan Manuel Castillo Sanchez, Jennifer Graham, Andrew Saulter, Jorge Bornemann, Alex Arnold, Joachim Fallmann, Chris Harris, David Pearson, Steven Ramsdale, Alberto Martínez-de la Torre, Lucy Bricheno, Eleanor Blyth, Victoria A. Bell, Helen Davies, Toby R. Marthews, Clare O'Neill, Heather Rumbold, Enda O'Dea, Ashley Brereton, Karen Guihou, Adrian Hines, Momme Butenschon, Simon J. Dadson, Tamzin Palmer, Jason Holt, Nick Reynard, Martin Best, John Edwards, and John Siddorn
Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 1–42, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-1-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-1-2018, 2018
Short summary
Short summary
In the real world the atmosphere, oceans and land surface are closely interconnected, and yet prediction systems tend to treat them in isolation. Those feedbacks are often illustrated in natural hazards, such as when strong winds lead to large waves and coastal damage, or when prolonged rainfall leads to saturated ground and high flowing rivers. For the first time, we have attempted to represent some of the feedbacks between sky, sea and land within a high-resolution forecast system for the UK.
Richard Wartenburger, Martin Hirschi, Markus G. Donat, Peter Greve, Andy J. Pitman, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Geosci. Model Dev., 10, 3609–3634, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-3609-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-3609-2017, 2017
Short summary
Short summary
This article analyses regional changes in climate extremes as a function of projected changes in global mean temperature. We introduce the DROUGHT-HEAT Regional Climate Atlas, an interactive tool to analyse and display a range of well-established climate extremes and water-cycle indices and their changes as a function of global warming. Readers are encouraged to use the online tool for visualization of specific indices of interest, e.g. to assess their response to 1.5 or 2 °C global warming.
Fiona J. Clubb, Simon M. Mudd, David T. Milodowski, Declan A. Valters, Louise J. Slater, Martin D. Hurst, and Ajay B. Limaye
Earth Surf. Dynam., 5, 369–385, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-5-369-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-5-369-2017, 2017
Short summary
Short summary
Floodplains and fluvial terraces can provide information about current and past river systems, helping to reveal how channels respond to changes in both climate and tectonics. We present a new method of identifying these features objectively from digital elevation models by analysing their slope and elevation compared to the modern river. We test our method in eight field sites, and find that it provides rapid and reliable extraction of floodplains and terraces across a range of landscapes.
Peter Greve, Lukas Gudmundsson, Boris Orlowsky, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 20, 2195–2205, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2195-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-2195-2016, 2016
Short summary
Short summary
The widely used Budyko framework is by definition limited to steady-state conditions. In this study we analytically derive a new, two-parameter formulation of the Budyko framework that represents conditions under which evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation. This is technically achieved by rotating the water supply limit within the Budyko space. The new formulation is shown to be capable to represent first-order seasonal dynamics within the hydroclimatological system.
T. R. Marthews, S. J. Dadson, B. Lehner, S. Abele, and N. Gedney
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 19, 91–104, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-91-2015, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-91-2015, 2015
Short summary
Short summary
Modelling land surface water flow is of critical importance in the context of climate change predictions. Many approaches are based on the popular hydrology model TOPMODEL, and the most important parameter of this model is the well-known topographic index. Here we present new, higher-resolution parameter maps of the topographic index, which are ideal for land surface modelling applications and show important improvements on the previous standard maps from HYDRO1k.
N. C. MacKellar, S. J. Dadson, M. New, and P. Wolski
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/hessd-10-11093-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/hessd-10-11093-2013, 2013
Revised manuscript not accepted
Related subject area
Subject: Hydrometeorology | Techniques and Approaches: Modelling approaches
Implementation of global soil databases in the Noah-MP model and the effects on simulated mean and extreme soil hydrothermal changes
Skilful probabilistic predictions of UK flood risk months ahead using a large-sample machine learning model trained on multimodel ensemble climate forecasts
Towards a robust hydrologic data assimilation system for hurricane-induced river flow forecasting
Enhanced evaluation of hourly and daily extreme precipitation in Norway from convection-permitting models at regional and local scales
Deep-learning-based sub-seasonal precipitation and streamflow ensemble forecasting over the source region of the Yangtze River
High-resolution land surface modelling over Africa: the role of uncertain soil properties in combination with forcing temporal resolution
Investigating the global and regional response of drought to idealized deforestation using multiple global climate models
Distribution, trends, and drivers of flash droughts in the United Kingdom
Are dependencies of extreme rainfall on humidity more reliable in convection-permitting climate models?
Leveraging a radar-based disdrometer network to develop a probabilistic precipitation phase model in eastern Canada
Assessment of seasonal soil moisture forecasts over the Central Mediterranean
Do land models miss key soil hydrological processes controlling soil moisture memory?
Observation-driven model for calculating water-harvesting potential from advective fog in (semi-)arid coastal regions
Review of gridded climate products and their use in hydrological analyses reveals overlaps, gaps, and the need for a more objective approach to selecting model forcing datasets
Barriers of urban hydro-meteorological simulation: a review
Downscaling the probability of heavy rainfall over the Nordic countries
Modelling convective cell life cycles with a copula-based approach
Downscaling precipitation over High-mountain Asia using multi-fidelity Gaussian processes: improved estimates from ERA5
Mapping soil moisture across the UK: assimilating cosmic-ray neutron sensors, remotely sensed indices, rainfall radar and catchment water balance data in a Bayesian hierarchical model
Assessing rainfall radar errors with an inverse stochastic modelling framework
Enhanced hydrological modelling with the WRF-Hydro lake/reservoir module at Convection-Permitting scale: a case study of the Tana River basin in East Africa
Multi-objective calibration and evaluation of the ORCHIDEE land surface model over France at high resolution
Probabilistic precipitation downscaling for ungauged mountain sites: a pilot study for the Hindu Kush Karakoram Himalaya
Spatiotemporal responses of runoff to climate change in the southern Tibetan Plateau
FROSTBYTE: a reproducible data-driven workflow for probabilistic seasonal streamflow forecasting in snow-fed river basins across North America
Storyline Analytical Framework for Understanding Future Severe Low-Water Episodes and Their Consequences
The role of land-atmosphere coupling in subseasonal surface air temperature prediction
On the combined use of rain gauges and GPM IMERG satellite rainfall products for hydrological modelling: impact assessment of the cellular-automata-based methodology in the Tanaro River basin in Italy
An increase in the spatial extent of European floods over the last 70 years
140-year daily ensemble streamflow reconstructions over 661 catchments in France
The agricultural expansion in South America's Dry Chaco: regional hydroclimate effects
Machine-learning-constrained projection of bivariate hydrological drought magnitudes and socioeconomic risks over China
Improving runoff simulation in the Western United States with Noah-MP and VIC models
Spatial variability in the seasonal precipitation lapse rates in complex topographical regions – application in France
Global catalog of soil moisture droughts over the past four decades
Assessing downscaling methods to simulate hydrologically relevant weather scenarios from a global atmospheric reanalysis: case study of the upper Rhône River (1902–2009)
Global total precipitable water variations and trends over the period 1958–2021
Assessing decadal- to centennial-scale nonstationary variability in meteorological drought trends
Identification of compound drought and heatwave events on a daily scale and across four seasons
Potential for historically unprecedented Australian droughts from natural variability and climate change
Flood risk assessment for Indian sub-continental river basins
Key ingredients in regional climate modelling for improving the representation of typhoon tracks and intensities
Divergent future drought projections in UK river flows and groundwater levels
Predicting extreme sub-hourly precipitation intensification based on temperature shifts
Hydroclimatic processes as the primary drivers of the Early Khvalynian transgression of the Caspian Sea: new developments
Accounting for hydroclimatic properties in flood frequency analysis procedures
Understanding the influence of “hot” models in climate impact studies: a hydrological perspective
A semi-parametric hourly space–time weather generator
A principal-component-based strategy for regionalisation of precipitation intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) statistics
Accounting for precipitation asymmetry in a multiplicative random cascade disaggregation model
Kazeem Abiodun Ishola, Gerald Mills, Ankur Prabhat Sati, Benjamin Obe, Matthias Demuzere, Deepak Upreti, Gourav Misra, Paul Lewis, Daire Walsh, Tim McCarthy, and Rowan Fealy
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2551–2582, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2551-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2551-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Global soil information introduces uncertainty into models that simulate soil hydrothermal changes. Using the Noah with Multiparameterization (Noah-MP) model with two different global soil datasets, we find under-represented soil properties in wet loam, causing a dry bias in soil moisture. This bias is more pronounced and drought categories are more severe in the SoilGrids dataset. We conclude that models should incorporate detailed, region-specific soil information to minimize model uncertainties.
Simon Moulds, Louise Slater, Louise Arnal, and Andrew W. Wood
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2393–2406, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2393-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2393-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Seasonal streamflow forecasts are an important component of flood risk management. Here, we train and test a machine learning model to predict the monthly maximum daily streamflow up to 4 months ahead. We train the model on precipitation and temperature forecasts to produce probabilistic hindcasts for 579 stations across the UK for the period 2004–2016. We show skilful results up to 4 months ahead in many locations, although, in general, the skill declines with increasing lead time.
Peyman Abbaszadeh, Fatemeh Gholizadeh, Keyhan Gavahi, and Hamid Moradkhani
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2407–2427, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2407-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2407-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
The Hybrid Ensemble and Variational Data Assimilation framework for Environmental Systems (HEAVEN) enhances flood predictions by refining hydrologic models through improved data integration and uncertainty management. Tested in three southeastern US watersheds during hurricanes, HEAVEN assimilates real-time United States Geological Survey (USGS) streamflow data, boosting forecast accuracy.
Kun Xie, Lu Li, Hua Chen, Stephanie Mayer, Andreas Dobler, Chong-Yu Xu, and Ozan Mert Göktürk
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2133–2152, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2133-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2133-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We compared hourly and daily extreme precipitation across Norway from HARMONIE Climate models at convection-permitting 3 km (HCLIM3) and 12 km (HCLIM12) resolutions. HCLIM3 more accurately captures the extremes in most regions and seasons (except in summer). Its advantages are more pronounced for hourly extremes than for daily extremes. The results highlight the value of convection-permitting models in improving extreme-precipitation predictions and in helping the local society brace for extreme weather.
Ningpeng Dong, Haoran Hao, Mingxiang Yang, Jianhui Wei, Shiqin Xu, and Harald Kunstmann
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2023–2042, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2023-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2023-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Hydrometeorological forecasting is crucial for managing water resources and mitigating extreme weather events, yet current long-term forecast products are often embedded with uncertainties. We develop a deep-learning-based modelling framework to improve 30 d rainfall and streamflow forecasts by combining advanced neural networks and physical models. With the flow forecast error reduced by up to 33 %, the framework has the potential to enhance water management and disaster prevention.
Bamidele Oloruntoba, Stefan Kollet, Carsten Montzka, Harry Vereecken, and Harrie-Jan Hendricks Franssen
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1659–1683, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1659-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1659-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We studied how soil and weather data affect land model simulations over Africa. By combining soil data processed in different ways with weather data of varying time intervals, we found that weather inputs had a greater impact on water processes than soil data type. However, the way soil data were processed became crucial when paired with high-frequency weather inputs, showing that detailed weather data can improve local and regional predictions of how water moves and interacts with the land.
Yan Li, Bo Huang, Chunping Tan, Xia Zhang, Francesco Cherubini, and Henning W. Rust
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1637–1658, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1637-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1637-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Deforestation has a significant impact on climate, yet its effects on drought remain less understood. This study investigates how deforestation affects drought across various climate zones and timescales. Findings indicate that deforestation leads to drier conditions in tropical regions and wetter conditions in arid areas, with minimal effects in temperate zones. Long-term drought is more affected than short-term drought, offering valuable insights into vegetation–climate interactions.
Iván Noguera, Jamie Hannaford, and Maliko Tanguy
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1295–1317, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1295-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1295-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
The study provides a detailed characterisation of flash drought in the UK for 1969–2021. The spatio-temporal distribution and trends of flash droughts are highly variable, with important regional and seasonal contrasts. In the UK, flash drought development responds primarily to precipitation variability, while the atmospheric evaporative demand plays a secondary role. We also found that the North Atlantic Oscillation is the main circulation pattern controlling flash drought development.
Geert Lenderink, Nikolina Ban, Erwan Brisson, Ségolène Berthou, Virginia Edith Cortés-Hernández, Elizabeth Kendon, Hayley J. Fowler, and Hylke de Vries
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1201–1220, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1201-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1201-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Future extreme rainfall events are influenced by changes in both absolute and relative humidity. The impact of increasing absolute humidity is reasonably well understood, but the role of relative humidity decreases over land remains largely unknown. Using hourly observations from France and the Netherlands, we find that lower relative humidity generally leads to more intense rainfall extremes. This relation is only captured well in recently developed convection-permitting climate models.
Alexis Bédard-Therrien, François Anctil, Julie M. Thériault, Olivier Chalifour, Fanny Payette, Alexandre Vidal, and Daniel F. Nadeau
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1135–1158, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1135-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1135-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Precipitation data from an automated observational network in eastern Canada showed a temperature interval where rain and snow could coexist. Random forest models were developed to classify the precipitation phase using meteorological data to evaluate operational applications. The models demonstrated significantly improved phase classification and reduced error compared to benchmark operational models. However, accurate prediction of mixed-phase precipitation remains challenging.
Lorenzo Silvestri, Miriam Saraceni, Bruno Brunone, Silvia Meniconi, Giulia Passadore, and Paolina Bongioannini Cerlini
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 925–946, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-925-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-925-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
This work demonstrates that seasonal forecasts of soil moisture are a valuable resource for groundwater management in the areas of the Central Mediterranean where longer memory timescales are found. In particular, they show significant correlation coefficients and forecast skill for the deepest soil moisture at 289 cm depth. Wet and dry events can be predicted 6 months in advance, and, in general, dry events are better captured than wet events.
Mohammad A. Farmani, Ali Behrangi, Aniket Gupta, Ahmad Tavakoly, Matthew Geheran, and Guo-Yue Niu
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 547–566, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-547-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-547-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Soil moisture memory (SMM) shows how long soil stays moist after rain, impacting climate and ecosystems. Current models often overestimate SMM, causing inaccuracies in evaporation predictions. We enhanced a land model, Noah-MP, to include better water flow and ponding processes, and we tested it against satellite and field data. This improved model reduced overestimations and enhanced short-term predictions, helping create more accurate climate and weather forecasts.
Felipe Lobos-Roco, Jordi Vilà-Guerau de Arellano, and Camilo del Río
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 109–125, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-109-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-109-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Water resources are fundamental for the social, economic, and natural development of (semi-)arid regions. Precipitation decreases due to climate change obligate us to find new water resources. Fog harvesting (FH) emerges as a complementary resource in regions where it is abundant but untapped. This research proposes a model to estimate FH potential in coastal (semi-)arid regions. This model could have broader applicability worldwide in regions where FH could be a viable water source.
Kyle R. Mankin, Sushant Mehan, Timothy R. Green, and David M. Barnard
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 85–108, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-85-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-85-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We assess 63 gridded ground (G), satellite (S), and reanalysis (R) climate datasets. Higher-density station data and less-hilly terrain improved climate data. In mountainous and humid regions, dataset types performed similarly; however, R outperformed G when underlying data had low station density. G outperformed S or R datasets, although better streamflow modeling did not always follow. Hydrologic analyses need datasets that better represent climate variable dependencies and complex topography.
Xuan Chen, Job Augustijn van der Werf, Arjan Droste, Miriam Coenders-Gerrits, and Remko Uijlenhoet
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3988, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-3988, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Our research highlights the need to integrate urban land surface and hydrological models to better predict and manage compound climate disasters in cities. We find that inadequate representation of water surfaces, hydraulic systems, and detailed building representations are key areas for improvement in future models. Coupled models show promise but face challenges at regional and neighbourhood scales. Interdisciplinary communication is crucial to enhance urban hydrometeorological simulations.
Rasmus E. Benestad, Kajsa M. Parding, and Andreas Dobler
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 45–65, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-45-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-45-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We present a new method to calculate the chance of heavy downpour and the maximum rainfall expected over a 25-year period. It is designed to analyse global climate models' reproduction of past and future climates. For the Nordic countries, it projects a wetter climate in the future with increased intensity but not necessarily more wet days. The analysis also shows that rainfall intensity is sensitive to future greenhouse gas emissions, while the number of wet days appears to be less affected.
Chien-Yu Tseng, Li-Pen Wang, and Christian Onof
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1–25, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
This study presents a new algorithm to model convective storms. We used advanced tracking methods to analyse 165 storm events in Birmingham (UK) and reconstruct storm cell life cycles. We found that cell properties like intensity and size are interrelated and vary over time. The new algorithm, based on vine copulas, accurately simulates these properties and their evolution. It also integrates an exponential shape function for realistic rainfall patterns, enhancing its hydrological applicability.
Kenza Tazi, Andrew Orr, Javier Hernandez-González, Scott Hosking, and Richard E. Turner
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4903–4925, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4903-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4903-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This work aims to improve the understanding of precipitation patterns in High-mountain Asia, a crucial water source for around 1.9 billion people. Through a novel machine learning method, we generate high-resolution precipitation predictions, including the likelihoods of floods and droughts. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our method is simpler to implement and more suitable for small datasets. The method also shows accuracy comparable to or better than existing benchmark datasets.
Peter E. Levy and the COSMOS-UK team
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4819–4836, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4819-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4819-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Having accurate up-to-date maps of soil moisture is important for many purposes. However, current modelled and remotely sensed maps are rather coarse and not very accurate. Here, we demonstrate a simple but accurate approach that is closely linked to direct measurements of soil moisture at a network sites across the UK, to the water balance (precipitation minus drainage and evaporation) measured at a large number of catchments (1212) and to remotely sensed satellite estimates.
Amy C. Green, Chris Kilsby, and András Bárdossy
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4539–4558, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4539-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4539-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Weather radar is a crucial tool in rainfall estimation, but radar rainfall estimates are subject to many error sources, with the true rainfall field unknown. A flexible model for simulating errors relating to the radar rainfall estimation process is implemented, inverting standard processing methods. This flexible and efficient model performs well in generating realistic weather radar images visually for a large range of event types.
Ling Zhang, Lu Li, Zhongshi Zhang, Joël Arnault, Stefan Sobolowski, Anthony Musili Mwanthi, Pratik Kad, Mohammed Abdullahi Hassan, Tanja Portele, and Harald Kunstmann
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2024-278, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2024-278, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for HESS
Short summary
Short summary
To address challenges related to unreliable hydrological simulations, we present an enhanced hydrological simulation with a refined climate model and a more comprehensive hydrological model. The model with the two parts outperforms that without, especially in migrating bias in peak flow and dry-season flow. Our findings highlight the enhanced hydrological simulation capability with the refined climate and lake module contributing 24 % and 76 % improvement, respectively.
Peng Huang, Agnès Ducharne, Lucia Rinchiuso, Jan Polcher, Laure Baratgin, Vladislav Bastrikov, and Eric Sauquet
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4455–4476, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4455-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4455-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We conducted a high-resolution hydrological simulation from 1959 to 2020 across France. We used a simple trial-and-error calibration to reduce the biases of the simulated water budget compared to observations. The selected simulation satisfactorily reproduces water fluxes, including their spatial contrasts and temporal trends. This work offers a reliable historical overview of water resources and a robust configuration for climate change impact analysis at the nationwide scale of France.
Marc Girona-Mata, Andrew Orr, Martin Widmann, Daniel Bannister, Ghulam Hussain Dars, Scott Hosking, Jesse Norris, David Ocio, Tony Phillips, Jakob Steiner, and Richard E. Turner
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2805, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2805, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We introduce a novel method for improving daily precipitation maps in mountain regions and pilot it across three basins in the Hindu Kush Karakoram Himalaya (HKH). The approach leverages climate model and weather station data, along with statistical / machine learning techniques. Our results show this approach outperforms traditional methods, especially in remote, ungauged areas, suggesting it could be used to improve precipitation maps across much of the HKH, as well as other mountain regions.
He Sun, Tandong Yao, Fengge Su, Wei Yang, and Deliang Chen
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4361–4381, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4361-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4361-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Our findings show that runoff in the Yarlung Zangbo (YZ) basin is primarily driven by rainfall, with the largest glacier runoff contribution in the downstream sub-basin. Annual runoff increased in the upper stream but decreased downstream due to varying precipitation patterns. It is expected to rise throughout the 21st century, mainly driven by increased rainfall.
Louise Arnal, Martyn P. Clark, Alain Pietroniro, Vincent Vionnet, David R. Casson, Paul H. Whitfield, Vincent Fortin, Andrew W. Wood, Wouter J. M. Knoben, Brandi W. Newton, and Colleen Walford
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4127–4155, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4127-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4127-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Forecasting river flow months in advance is crucial for water sectors and society. In North America, snowmelt is a key driver of flow. This study presents a statistical workflow using snow data to forecast flow months ahead in North American snow-fed rivers. Variations in the river flow predictability across the continent are evident, raising concerns about future predictability in a changing (snow) climate. The reproducible workflow hosted on GitHub supports collaborative and open science.
Gabriel Rondeau-Genesse, Louis-Philippe Caron, Kristelle Audet, Laurent Da Silva, Daniel Tarte, Rachel Parent, Élise Comeau, and Dominic Matte
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2595, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2595, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The 2021 drought in Quebec showcased the province’s potential vulnerability. This study uses a storyline approach to explore impacts of future extreme droughts under +2 °C and +3 °C warming scenarios. By combining regional climate and hydrological simulations, it highlights the potential for severe water deficits. Collaboration with water management experts helped project the impacts of those future extreme droughts and their consequences for ecosystems and human activities.
Yuna Lim, Andrea M. Molod, Randal D. Koster, and Joseph A. Santanello
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2312, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2312, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
To better utilize a given set of predictions, identifying “forecasts of opportunity” has great value. It can help anticipate when prediction skill will be higher. This study reveals that when strong L-A coupling is detected 3–4 weeks into a forecast, the prediction skill for surface air temperature at this lead increases across the Midwest and northern Great Plains. Regions experiencing strong L-A coupling exhibit warm and dry anomalies, leading to improved predictions of abnormally warm events.
Annalina Lombardi, Barbara Tomassetti, Valentina Colaiuda, Ludovico Di Antonio, Paolo Tuccella, Mario Montopoli, Giovanni Ravazzani, Frank Silvio Marzano, Raffaele Lidori, and Giulia Panegrossi
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3777–3797, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3777-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3777-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The accurate estimation of precipitation and its spatial variability within a watershed is crucial for reliable discharge simulations. The study is the first detailed analysis of the potential usage of the cellular automata technique to merge different rainfall data inputs to hydrological models. This work shows an improvement in the performance of hydrological simulations when satellite and rain gauge data are merged.
Beijing Fang, Emanuele Bevacqua, Oldrich Rakovec, and Jakob Zscheischler
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3755–3775, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3755-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3755-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We use grid-based runoff from a hydrological model to identify large spatiotemporally connected flood events in Europe, assess extent trends over the last 70 years, and attribute the trends to different drivers. Our findings reveal a general increase in flood extent, with regional variations driven by diverse factors. The study not only enables a thorough examination of flood events across multiple basins but also highlights the potential challenges arising from changing flood extents.
Alexandre Devers, Jean-Philippe Vidal, Claire Lauvernet, Olivier Vannier, and Laurie Caillouet
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3457–3474, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3457-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3457-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Daily streamflow series for 661 near-natural French catchments are reconstructed over 1871–2012 using two ensemble datasets: HydRE and HydREM. They include uncertainties coming from climate forcings, streamflow measurement, and hydrological model error (for HydrREM). Comparisons with other hydrological reconstructions and independent/dependent observations show the added value of the two reconstructions in terms of quality, uncertainty estimation, and representation of extremes.
María Agostina Bracalenti, Omar V. Müller, Miguel A. Lovino, and Ernesto Hugo Berbery
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3281–3303, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3281-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3281-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The Gran Chaco is a large, dry forest in South America that has been heavily deforested, particularly in the dry Chaco subregion. This deforestation, mainly driven by the expansion of the agricultural frontier, has changed the land's characteristics, affecting the local and regional climate. The study reveals that deforestation has resulted in reduced precipitation, soil moisture, and runoff, and if intensive agriculture continues, it could make summers in this arid region even drier and hotter.
Rutong Liu, Jiabo Yin, Louise Slater, Shengyu Kang, Yuanhang Yang, Pan Liu, Jiali Guo, Xihui Gu, Xiang Zhang, and Aliaksandr Volchak
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3305–3326, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3305-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3305-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Climate change accelerates the water cycle and alters the spatiotemporal distribution of hydrological variables, thus complicating the projection of future streamflow and hydrological droughts. We develop a cascade modeling chain to project future bivariate hydrological drought characteristics over China, using five bias-corrected global climate model outputs under three shared socioeconomic pathways, five hydrological models, and a deep-learning model.
Lu Su, Dennis P. Lettenmaier, Ming Pan, and Benjamin Bass
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 3079–3097, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3079-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3079-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We fine-tuned the variable infiltration capacity (VIC) and Noah-MP models across 263 river basins in the Western US. We developed transfer relationships to similar basins and extended the fine-tuned parameters to ungauged basins. Both models performed best in humid areas, and the skills improved post-calibration. VIC outperforms Noah-MP in all but interior dry basins following regionalization. VIC simulates annual mean streamflow and high flow well, while Noah-MP performs better for low flows.
Valentin Dura, Guillaume Evin, Anne-Catherine Favre, and David Penot
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 2579–2601, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2579-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2579-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The increase in precipitation as a function of elevation is poorly understood in areas with complex topography. In this article, the reproduction of these orographic gradients is assessed with several precipitation products. The best product is a simulation from a convection-permitting regional climate model. The corresponding seasonal gradients vary significantly in space, with higher values for the first topographical barriers exposed to the dominant air mass circulations.
Jan Řehoř, Rudolf Brázdil, Oldřich Rakovec, Martin Hanel, Milan Fischer, Rohini Kumar, Jan Balek, Markéta Poděbradská, Vojtěch Moravec, Luis Samaniego, and Miroslav Trnka
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1434, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1434, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We present a robust method for identification and classification of global land drought events (GLDEs) based on soil moisture. Two models were used to calculate soil moisture and delimit soil drought over global land from 1980–2022, which was clustered into 775/630 GLDEs. Using four spatiotemporal and three motion-related characteristics, we categorized GLDEs into seven severity and seven dynamic categories. The frequency of GLDEs has generally increased in recent decades.
Caroline Legrand, Benoît Hingray, Bruno Wilhelm, and Martin Ménégoz
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 2139–2166, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2139-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2139-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Climate change is expected to increase flood hazard worldwide. The evolution is typically estimated from multi-model chains, where regional hydrological scenarios are simulated from weather scenarios derived from coarse-resolution atmospheric outputs of climate models. We show that two such chains are able to reproduce, from an atmospheric reanalysis, the 1902–2009 discharge variations and floods of the upper Rhône alpine river, provided that the weather scenarios are bias-corrected.
Nenghan Wan, Xiaomao Lin, Roger A. Pielke Sr., Xubin Zeng, and Amanda M. Nelson
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 2123–2137, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2123-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2123-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Global warming occurs at a rate of 0.21 K per decade, resulting in about 9.5 % K−1 of water vapor response to temperature from 1993 to 2021. Terrestrial areas experienced greater warming than the ocean, with a ratio of 2 : 1. The total precipitable water change in response to surface temperature changes showed a variation around 6 % K−1–8 % K−1 in the 15–55° N latitude band. Further studies are needed to identify the mechanisms leading to different water vapor responses.
Kyungmin Sung, Max C. A. Torbenson, and James H. Stagge
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 2047–2063, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2047-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2047-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This study examines centuries of nonstationary trends in meteorological drought and pluvial climatology. A novel approach merges tree-ring proxy data (North American Seasonal Precipitation Atlas – NASPA) with instrumental precipitation datasets by temporally downscaling proxy data, correcting biases, and analyzing shared trends in normal and extreme precipitation anomalies. We identify regions experiencing recent unprecedented shifts towards drier or wetter conditions and shifts in seasonality.
Baoying Shan, Niko E. C. Verhoest, and Bernard De Baets
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 2065–2080, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2065-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2065-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This study developed a convenient and new method to identify the occurrence of droughts, heatwaves, and co-occurring droughts and heatwaves (CDHW) across four seasons. Using this method, we could establish the start and/or end dates of drought (or heatwave) events. We found an increase in the frequency of heatwaves and CDHW events in Belgium caused by climate change. We also found that different months have different chances of CDHW events.
Georgina M. Falster, Nicky M. Wright, Nerilie J. Abram, Anna M. Ukkola, and Benjamin J. Henley
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 1383–1401, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-1383-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-1383-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Multi-year droughts have severe environmental and economic impacts, but the instrumental record is too short to characterise multi-year drought variability. We assessed the nature of Australian multi-year droughts using simulations of the past millennium from 11 climate models. We show that multi-decadal
megadroughtsare a natural feature of the Australian hydroclimate. Human-caused climate change is also driving a tendency towards longer droughts in eastern and southwestern Australia.
Urmin Vegad, Yadu Pokhrel, and Vimal Mishra
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 1107–1126, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-1107-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-1107-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
A large population is affected by floods, which leave their footprints through human mortality, migration, and damage to agriculture and infrastructure, during almost every summer monsoon season in India. Despite the massive damage of floods, sub-basin level flood risk assessment is still in its infancy and needs to be improved. Using hydrological and hydrodynamic models, we reconstructed sub-basin level observed floods for the 1901–2020 period.
Qi Sun, Patrick Olschewski, Jianhui Wei, Zhan Tian, Laixiang Sun, Harald Kunstmann, and Patrick Laux
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 761–780, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-761-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-761-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Tropical cyclones (TCs) often cause high economic loss due to heavy winds and rainfall, particularly in densely populated regions such as the Pearl River Delta (China). This study provides a reference to set up regional climate models for TC simulations. They contribute to a better TC process understanding and assess the potential changes and risks of TCs in the future. This lays the foundation for hydrodynamical modelling, from which the cities' disaster management and defence could benefit.
Simon Parry, Jonathan D. Mackay, Thomas Chitson, Jamie Hannaford, Eugene Magee, Maliko Tanguy, Victoria A. Bell, Katie Facer-Childs, Alison Kay, Rosanna Lane, Robert J. Moore, Stephen Turner, and John Wallbank
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 417–440, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-417-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-417-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We studied drought in a dataset of possible future river flows and groundwater levels in the UK and found different outcomes for these two sources of water. Throughout the UK, river flows are likely to be lower in future, with droughts more prolonged and severe. However, whilst these changes are also found in some boreholes, in others, higher levels and less severe drought are indicated for the future. This has implications for the future balance between surface water and groundwater below.
Francesco Marra, Marika Koukoula, Antonio Canale, and Nadav Peleg
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 375–389, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-375-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-375-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We present a new physical-based method for estimating extreme sub-hourly precipitation return levels (i.e., intensity–duration–frequency, IDF, curves), which are critical for the estimation of future floods. The proposed model, named TENAX, incorporates temperature as a covariate in a physically consistent manner. It has only a few parameters and can be easily set for any climate station given sub-hourly precipitation and temperature data are available.
Alexander Gelfan, Andrey Panin, Andrey Kalugin, Polina Morozova, Vladimir Semenov, Alexey Sidorchuk, Vadim Ukraintsev, and Konstantin Ushakov
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 241–259, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-241-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-241-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Paleogeographical data show that 17–13 ka BP, the Caspian Sea level was 80 m above the current level. There are large disagreements on the genesis of this “Great” Khvalynian transgression of the sea, and we tried to shed light on this issue. Using climate and hydrological models as well as the paleo-reconstructions, we proved that the transgression could be initiated solely by hydroclimatic factors within the deglaciation period in the absence of the glacial meltwater effect.
Joeri B. Reinders and Samuel E. Munoz
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 217–227, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-217-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-217-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Flooding presents a major hazard for people and infrastructure along waterways; however, it is challenging to study the likelihood of a flood magnitude occurring regionally due to a lack of long discharge records. We show that hydroclimatic variables like Köppen climate regions and precipitation intensity explain part of the variance in flood frequency distributions and thus reduce the uncertainty of flood probability estimates. This gives water managers a tool to locally improve flood analysis.
Mehrad Rahimpour Asenjan, Francois Brissette, Jean-Luc Martel, and Richard Arsenault
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 4355–4367, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-4355-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-4355-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Climate models are central to climate change impact studies. Some models project a future deemed too hot by many. We looked at how including hot models may skew the result of impact studies. Applied to hydrology, this study shows that hot models do not systematically produce hydrological outliers.
Ross Pidoto and Uwe Haberlandt
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 3957–3975, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3957-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3957-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Long continuous time series of meteorological variables (i.e. rainfall, temperature) are required for the modelling of floods. Observed time series are generally too short or not available. Weather generators are models that reproduce observed weather time series. This study extends an existing station-based rainfall model into space by enforcing observed spatial rainfall characteristics. To model other variables (i.e. temperature) the model is then coupled to a simple resampling approach.
Kajsa Maria Parding, Rasmus Emil Benestad, Anita Verpe Dyrrdal, and Julia Lutz
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 3719–3732, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3719-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3719-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves describe the likelihood of extreme rainfall and are used in hydrology and engineering, for example, for flood forecasting and water management. We develop a model to estimate IDF curves from daily meteorological observations, which are more widely available than the observations on finer timescales (minutes to hours) that are needed for IDF calculations. The method is applied to all data at once, making it efficient and robust to individual errors.
Kaltrina Maloku, Benoit Hingray, and Guillaume Evin
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 27, 3643–3661, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3643-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-3643-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
High-resolution precipitation data, needed for many applications in hydrology, are typically rare. Such data can be simulated from daily precipitation with stochastic disaggregation. In this work, multiplicative random cascades are used to disaggregate time series of 40 min precipitation from daily precipitation for 81 Swiss stations. We show that very relevant statistics of precipitation are obtained when precipitation asymmetry is accounted for in a continuous way in the cascade generator.
Cited articles
Beven, K.: Deep learning, hydrological processes and the uniqueness of place,
Hydrol. Process., 34, 3608–3613, https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13805, 2020. a
Burnash, R.: The NWS River Forecast System-catchment modeling, in: Computer models of watershed hydrology, Water Resources Publications, 311–366, ISBN 10 1-887201-74-2, 1995. a
Chu, E., Roy, D., and Andreas, J.: Are visual explanations useful? a case study in model-in-the-loop prediction, arXiv preprint: arXiv:2007.12248, 2020. a
Coxon, G., Addor, N., Bloomfield, J., Freer, J., Fry, M., Hannaford, J.,
Howden, N., Lane, R., Lewis, M., Robinson, E., Wagener, T., and Woods, R.:
Catchment attributes and hydro-meteorological timeseries for 671 catchments
across Great Britain (CAMELS-GB), UK CEH [data set], https://doi.org/10.5285/8344e4f3-d2ea-44f5-8afa-86d2987543a9, 2020a.
a, b
Coxon, G., Addor, N., Bloomfield, J. P., Freer, J., Fry, M., Hannaford, J., Howden, N. J. K., Lane, R., Lewis, M., Robinson, E. L., Wagener, T., and Woods, R.: CAMELS-GB: hydrometeorological time series and landscape attributes for 671 catchments in Great Britain, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2459–2483, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2459-2020, 2020b. a, b, c
Doshi-Velez, F. and Kim, B.: Towards a rigorous science of interpretable
machine learning, arXiv preprint: arXiv:1702.08608, 2017. a
European Union Digital Strategy: Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI,
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/ethics-guidelines-trustworthy-ai (last access: 7 December 2021), 2019. a
Feng, D., Fang, K., and Shen, C.: Enhancing streamflow forecast and extracting insights using long-short term memory networks with data integration at continental scales, Water Resour. Res., 56, e2019WR026793, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR026793, 2020. a
Friedman, J., Hastie, T., and Tibshirani, R.: Regularization paths for
generalized linear models via coordinate descent, J. Stat. Softw., 33, 1, https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v033.i01, 2010. a, b
Gauch, M. and Lin, J.: A Data Scientist's Guide to Streamflow Prediction,
arxiv: preprint, https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.12975 (last access: 15 July 2021), 2020. a
Gauch, M., Kratzert, F., Klotz, D., Nearing, G., Lin, J., and Hochreiter, S.: Rainfall–runoff prediction at multiple timescales with a single Long Short-Term Memory network, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 2045–2062, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2045-2021, 2021. a
Ghorbani, A. and Zou, J.: Neuron shapley: Discovering the responsible neurons, arXiv preprint: arXiv:2002.09815, 2020. a
Gruber, A., Scanlon, T., van der Schalie, R., Wagner, W., and Dorigo, W.: Evolution of the ESA CCI Soil Moisture climate data records and their underlying merging methodology, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 11, 717–739, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-717-2019, 2019. a
Hersbach, H., Bell, B., Berrisford, P., Hirahara, S., Horányi, A.,
Muñoz-Sabater, J., Nicolas, J., Peubey, C., Radu, R., Schepers, D.,,
Simmons, A., Soci, C., Abdalla, S., Abellan, X., Balsamo, G., Bechtold, P., Biavati, G., Bidlot, J., Bonavita, M., De Chiara, G., Dahlgren, P., Dee, D., Diamantakis, M., Dragani, R., Flemming, J., Forbes, R., Fuentes, M., Geer, A., Haimberger, L., Healy, S., Hogan, R. J., and Hólm, E., Janisková, M., Keeley, S., Laloyaux, P., Lopez, P., Lupu, C., Radnoti, G., de Rosnay, P., Rozum, I., Vamborg, F., Villaume, S., and Thépaut, J.-N.: The ERA5 global reanalysis, Q. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc., 146, 1999–2049, 2020. a
James, G., Witten, D., Hastie, T., and Tibshirani, R.: An introduction to
statistical learning, in: vol. 112, Springer, ISBN 978-1-4614-7138-7, 2013. a
Karpatne, A., Atluri, G., Faghmous, J. H., Steinbach, M., Banerjee, A.,
Ganguly, A., Shekhar, S., Samatova, N., and Kumar, V.: Theory-guided data
science: A new paradigm for scientific discovery from data, IEEE T. Knowl. Data Eng., 29, 2318–2331, 2017. a
Kingma, D. P. and Ba, J.: Adam: A method for stochastic optimization, arXiv
preprint: arXiv:1412.6980, 2014. a
Kirchner, J. W.: Getting the right answers for the right reasons: Linking
measurements, analyses, and models to advance the science of hydrology, Water
Resour. Res., 42, W03S04, https://doi.org/10.1029/2005WR004362, 2006. a
Kratzert, F.: neuralhydrology/neuralhydrology, Github [code], https://github.com/neuralhydrology/neuralhydrology, last access: 7 June 2022. a
Kratzert, F., Klotz, D., Brenner, C., Schulz, K., and Herrnegger, M.:
Rainfall–runoff modelling using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks,
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 6005–6022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-6005-2018, 2018. a, b, c, d
Kratzert, F., Herrnegger, M., Klotz, D., Hochreiter, S., and Klambauer, G.:
NeuralHydrology – Interpreting LSTMs in Hydrology, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 347–362, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28954-6_19, 2019a. a
Kratzert, F., Klotz, D., Herrnegger, M., Sampson, A. K., Hochreiter, S., and
Nearing, G. S.: Toward Improved Predictions in Ungauged Basins: Exploiting
the Power of Machine Learning, Water Resour. Res., 55, 11344–11354, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR026065, 2019c. a, b
Kratzert, F., Klotz, D., Shalev, G., Klambauer, G., Hochreiter, S., and
Nearing, G.: Towards learning universal, regional, and local hydrological
behaviors via machine learning applied to large-sample datasets, Hydrol.
Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 5089–5110, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5089-2019, 2019d. a, b, c, d, e
Lane, R., Coxon, G., Freer, J., and Wagener, T.: Lane_et_al_Benchmark_FUSE_GB, University of Bristo [code], https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.3ma509dlakcf720aw8x82aq4tm, 2020. a
Lees, T.: Hydrological Concept Formation inside Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, Zenodo [data set], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5600851, 2021. a
Lees, T.: tommylees112/neuralhydrology, Github [code], https://github.com/tommylees112/neuralhydrology/tree/pixel, last access: 7 June 2022. a
Lees, T., Buechel, M., Anderson, B., Slater, L., Reece, S., Coxon, G., and Dadson, S. J.: Benchmarking data-driven rainfall–runoff models in Great Britain: a comparison of long short-term memory (LSTM)-based models with four lumped conceptual models, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 25, 5517–5534, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-5517-2021, 2021. a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h
Lipton, Z. C.: The Mythos of Model Interpretability: In machine learning, the
concept of interpretability is both important and slippery, Queue, 16, 31–57, 2018. a
Lundberg, S. M. and Lee, S.-I.: A unified approach to interpreting model
predictions, in: Proceedings of the 31st international conference on neural
information processing systems, 4768–4777, https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2017/file/8a20a8621978632d76c43dfd28b67767-Paper.pdf (last access: 15 July 2021), 2017. a
Ma, K., Feng, D., Lawson, K., Tsai, W.-P., Liang, C., Huang, X., Sharma, A.,
and Shen, C.: Transferring hydrologic data across continents – leveraging US data to improve hydrologic prediction in other countries, Earth and Space
Science Open Archive, p. 28, https://doi.org/10.1002/essoar.10504132.1, 2020. a, b
Manning, C., Widmann, M., Bevacqua, E., Van Loon, A. F., Maraun, D., and Vrac, M.: Soil moisture drought in Europe: a compound event of precipitation and potential evapotranspiration on multiple time scales, J. Hydrometeorol., 19, 1255–1271, 2018. a
Muñoz-Sabater, J., Dutra, E., Agustí-Panareda, A., Albergel, C., Arduini, G., Balsamo, G., Boussetta, S., Choulga, M., Harrigan, S., Hersbach, H., Martens, B., Miralles, D. G., Piles, M., Rodríguez-Fernández, N. J., Zsoter, E., Buontempo, C., and Thépaut, J.-N.: ERA5-Land: a state-of-the-art global reanalysis dataset for land applications, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 4349–4383, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4349-2021, 2021. a, b, c, d
Nair, V. and Hinton, G. E.: Rectified linear units improve restricted boltzmann machines, Icml, https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fritz/absps/reluICML.pdf (last access: 15 July 2021), 2010. a
Nguyen, D.: Comparing automatic and human evaluation of local explanations for text classification, in: Volume 1 (Long Papers), Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, 1069–1078, https://aclanthology.org/N18-1097/ (last access: 15 July 2021), 2018. a
Olah, C.: Understanding LSTM Networks – colah's blog,
http://colah.github.io/posts/2015-08-Understanding-LSTMs/ (last access: 15 July 2021), 2016. a
Olah, C., Satyanarayan, A., Johnson, I., Carter, S., Schubert, L., Ye, K., and Mordvintsev, A.: The building blocks of interpretability, Distill, 3, e10, https://doi.org/10.23915/distill.00010, 2018. a
Olah, C., Cammarata, N., Schubert, L., Goh, G., Petrov, M., and Carter, S.:
Zoom in: An introduction to circuits, Distill, 5, e00024-001, https://doi.org/10.23915/distill.00024.001, 2020. a
Reichstein, M., Camps-Valls, G., Stevens, B., Jung, M., Denzler, J.,
Carvalhais, N., and Prabhat, P.: Deep learning and process understanding for data-driven Earth system science, Nature, 566, 195–204, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-0912-1, 2019.
a
Ribeiro, M. T., Singh, S., and Guestrin, C.: “Why should i trust you?”
Explaining the predictions of any classifier, in: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM
SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, arxiv: prepint, 1135–1144, https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04938 (last access: 15 July 2021), 2016. a
Samaniego, L., Thober, S., Kumar, R., Wanders, N., Rakovec, O., Pan, M., Zink, M., Sheffield, J., Wood, E. F., and Marx, A.: Anthropogenic warming
exacerbates European soil moisture droughts, Nat. Clim. Change, 8, 421–426, 2018. a
Shen, C.: A Transdisciplinary Review of Deep Learning Research and Its
Relevance for Water Resources Scientists, Water Resour. Res., 54, 8558–8593, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR022643, 2018. a
Sklash, M. G. and Farvolden, R. N.: The role of groundwater in storm runoff,
J. Hydrol., 43, 45–65, 1979. a
Spiegelhalter, D.: Should we trust algorithms?, Harvard Data Science Review, 2, https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.cb91a35a, 2020. a
Srivastava, N., Hinton, G., Krizhevsky, A., Sutskever, I., and Salakhutdinov,
R.: Dropout: a simple way to prevent neural networks from overfitting, J. Mach. Learn. Res., 15, 1929–1958, 2014. a
UK Statistics Authority: Understanding artificial intelligence ethics and
safety: A guide for the responsible design and implementation of AI systems
in the public sector, SSRN 3403301, 2019. a
Wilby, R., Abrahart, R., and Dawson, C.: Detection of conceptual model
rainfall–runoff processes inside an artificial neural network, Hydrolog. Sci. J., 48, 163–181, 2003. a
Young, P.: Data-based mechanistic modelling of environmental, ecological,
economic and engineering systems, Environ. Model. Softw., 13, 105–122, 1998. a
Young, P.: Top-down and data-based mechanistic modelling of rainfall–flow
dynamics at the catchment scale, Hydrol. Process., 17, 2195–2217, 2003. a
Young, P. C. and Beven, K. J.: Data-based mechanistic modelling and the
rainfall-flow non-linearity, Environmetrics, 5, 335–363, 1994. a
Short summary
Despite the accuracy of deep learning rainfall-runoff models, we are currently uncertain of what these models have learned. In this study we explore the internals of one deep learning architecture and demonstrate that the model learns about intermediate hydrological stores of soil moisture and snow water, despite never having seen data about these processes during training. Therefore, we find evidence that the deep learning approach learns a physically realistic mapping from inputs to outputs.
Despite the accuracy of deep learning rainfall-runoff models, we are currently uncertain of what...
