CAMELS-CH: hydro-meteorological time series and landscape attributes for 331 catchments in hydrologic Switzerland

Abstract

We present CAMELS-CH (Catchment Attributes and MEteorology for Large-sample Studies - Switzerland), a large-sample hydro-meteorological data set for hydrologic Switzerland in central Europe. This domain covers 331 basins within Switzerland and neighboring countries. About one-third of the catchments are located in Austria, France, Germany and Italy. As an Alpine country, Switzerland covers a vast diversity of landscapes, including mountainous environments, karstic regions, and several strongly cultivated regions, along with a wide range of hydrological regimes, i.e., catchments that are glacier-, snow- or rain dominated. Similar to existing data sets, CAMELS-CH comprises dynamic hydro-meteorological variables and static catchment attributes. CAMELS-CH (; available at 10.5281/zenodo.7784632) encompasses 40 years of data between 1 January 1981 and 31 December 2020, including daily time series of stream flow and water levels, and of meteorological data such as precipitation and air temperature. It also includes daily snow water equivalent data for each catchment starting from 2 September 1998. Additionally, we provide annual time series of land cover change and glacier evolution per catchment. The static catchment attributes cover location and topography, climate, hydrology, soil, hydrogeology, geology, land use, human impact and glaciers. This Swiss data set complements comparable publicly accessible data sets, providing data from the "water tower of Europe".