Global hydrological reanalyses: The value of river discharge information for world-wide downstream applications – The example of the Global Flood Awareness System GloFAS

Abstract

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's land masses, they can fill the many gaps in river discharge in-situ observational data, especially in the global South. These gaps impede knowledge of both hydrological status and future evolution and hamper the development of reliable early warning systems for hydrological-related disaster reduction. River discharge is a natural integrator of the water cycle over land. Global hydrological reanalysis datasets offer an understanding of its spatio-temporal variability and are therefore critical for addressing the water–energy–food–environment nexus. This paper describes how global hydrological reanalyses can fill the lack of ground measurements by using earth system or hydrological models to provide river discharge time series. Following an inventory of alternative sources of river discharge datasets, reviewing their advantages and limitations, the paper introduces the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) 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 and Climate Change).