Articles | Volume 29, issue 13
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2811-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2811-2025
Research article
 | 
04 Jul 2025
Research article |  | 04 Jul 2025

Assessing the adequacy of traditional hydrological models for climate change impact studies: a case for long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks

Jean-Luc Martel, François Brissette, Richard Arsenault, Richard Turcotte, Mariana Castañeda-Gonzalez, William Armstrong, Edouard Mailhot, Jasmine Pelletier-Dumont, Gabriel Rondeau-Genesse, and Louis-Philippe Caron

Data sets

HYSETS - A 14425 watershed Hydrometeorological Sandbox over North America R. Arsenault et al. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RPC3W

CMIP6 data Earth System Grid Federation https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/

Model code and software

LSTM climate change paper codes and data R. Arsenault et al. https://osf.io/5yw4u/

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Short summary
This study compares long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks with traditional hydrological models to predict future streamflow under climate change. Using data from 148 catchments, it finds that LSTM models, which learn from extensive data sequences, perform differently and often better than traditional hydrological models. The continental LSTM model, which includes data from diverse climate zones, is particularly effective for understanding climate impacts on water resources.
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