Seasonal reforecasts of river discharge and related data by the European Flood Awareness System

This dataset provides modelled daily hydrological time series forced with seasonal meteorological reforecasts. The dataset is a consistent representation of the most important hydrological variables across the European Flood Awareness (EFAS) domain. The temporal resolution is daily forecasts initialised once a month from 1991 to near real-time of:

River discharge
Volumetric soil moisture
Snow water equivalent
Soil wetness index (root zone)
Runoff water equivalent (surface plus subsurface)

Also provided are auxiliary (time invariant) data to aid interpretation of river discharge and soil moisture data. These auxiliary data are the upstream area, elevation, soil depth, wilting capacity and field capacity. The latter three are provided at three soil levels, one for each of the three soil layers represented in LISFLOOD.
This data set was produced by forcing the open-source LISFLOOD hydrological model at a 1x1 arcminute resolution (~1.5 km at EFAS latitudes) with seasonal meteorological ensemble reforecasts. For version 4.0, the open-source LISFLOOD hydrological model was forced at a 5x5km resolution. Reforecasts are forecasts run over past dates and are typically used to assess the skill of a forecast system or to develop tools for statistical error correction of the forecasts. The reforecasts are initialised on the first of each month with a lead time of 215 days at 24-hour time steps. The forcing meteorological data are seasonal reforecasts from the European Centre of Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), consisting of 25 ensemble members up until December 2016, and after that 51 members. Hydrometeorological reforecasts are available from 1991-01-01 to near real-time.
Companion datasets, also available through the Early Warning Data Store (EWDS), are seasonal forecasts, for which the seasonal reforecasts can be useful for local skill assessment and post-processing of the seasonal forecasts. For users looking for shorter time ranges there are medium-range forecasts and reforecasts, as well as historical simulations which can be used to derive the hydrological climatology. For users looking for global hydrological data, we refer to the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) forecasts and historical simulations. All these datasets are part of the operational flood forecasting within the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS).
All these datasets are part of the operational flood forecasting within the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), which is managed, technically implemented and developed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.