Global hydrological reanalyses: the value of river discharge information for world-wide downstream applications

Global hydrological reanalyses are modelled datasets providing information on river discharge evolution everywhere in the world. With multi-decadal daily timeseries, they provide long-term context to identify extreme hydrological events such as floods and droughts. By covering the majority of the world land masses, they can fill the many river discharge in-situ observational gaps. Moreover, the knowledge and understanding of river discharge variability in space and time offered by global hydrological reanalysis datasets are critical for addressing the water-energy-food-environment nexus. Following an inventory and review of alternative sources of river discharge datasets, this paper describes the usefulness of global hydrological reanalyses. It then introduces the Global Flood Awareness System Copernicus Emergency Management Service modelling chain and its reanalysis dataset as an example of a global hydrological reanalysis dataset. It then reviews examples of downstream applications for global hydrological reanalyses, including monitoring of land water resources and ocean dynamics, understanding large scale hydrological extreme fluctuations, Early Warning Systems, Earth System Model diagnostics, and the calibration and training of models, with examples from three Copernicus Services (Emergency Management, Marine Monitoring and Management, and Climate Change).

PRUDHOMME Christel;  ZSOTER Ervin;  MATTHEWS Gwyneth;  ANGELIQUE Melet;  GRIMALDI Stefania;  ZUO Hao;  HANSFORD Eleanor;  HARRIGAN Shaun;  MAZZETTI Cinzia;  BOISSESON Eric;  SALAMON Peter;  GARRIC Gilles; 

2024-04-16

WILEY

JRC134078

1350-4827 (online),   

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/met.2192,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC134078,   

10.1002/met.2192 (online),