Historic reconstructions of daily river flow for 303 UK catchments (1891-2015)
Cite this dataset as:
Smith, K.A.; Tanguy, M.; Hannaford, J.; Prudhomme, C. (2018). Historic reconstructions of daily river flow for 303 UK catchments (1891-2015). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/f710bed1-e564-47bf-b82c-4c2a2fe2810e
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This dataset is made available under the terms of the Open Government Licence 
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wget --user=YOUR_USERNAME --password=YOUR_PASSWORD --auth-no-challenge https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/datastore/eidchub/f710bed1-e564-47bf-b82c-4c2a2fe2810e
https://doi.org/10.5285/f710bed1-e564-47bf-b82c-4c2a2fe2810e
This dataset is model output from the GR4J lumped catchment hydrology model. It provides 500 model realisations of daily river flow, in cubic metres per second (cumecs, m3/s), for 303 UK catchments for the period between 1891-2015. The modelled catchments are part of the National River Flow Archive (NRFA) (https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/) and provide good spatial coverage across the UK. These flow reconstructions were produced as part of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) funded Historic Droughts and IMPETUS projects, to provide consistent modelled daily flow data across the UK from 1891-2015, with estimates of uncertainty. This dataset is an outcome of the Historic Droughts Project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1).
The data are provided in two formats to help the user account for uncertainty:
(1) a 500-member ensemble of daily river flow time series for each catchment, with their corresponding model parameters and evaluation metric scores of model performance.
(2) a single river flow time series (one corresponding to the top run of the 500), with the maximum and minimum daily limits of the 500 ensemble members.
The data are provided in two formats to help the user account for uncertainty:
(1) a 500-member ensemble of daily river flow time series for each catchment, with their corresponding model parameters and evaluation metric scores of model performance.
(2) a single river flow time series (one corresponding to the top run of the 500), with the maximum and minimum daily limits of the 500 ensemble members.
Publication date: 2018-03-12
View numbers valid from 01 June 2023 Download numbers valid from 20 June 2024 (information prior to this was not collected)
Format
Comma-separated values (CSV)
Spatial information
Study area
Spatial representation type
Tabular (text)
Spatial reference system
OSGB 1936 / British National Grid
Temporal information
Temporal extent
1891-01-01 to 2015-11-30
Provenance & quality
The GR4J model (v 1.0.2) was run over the calibration period (1982-2014) using 500,000 Latin Hypercube Sampled model parameter sets. These model parameters were assessed against observations from the National River Flow Archive (NRFA). For two catchments (the Thames at Kingston, and the Lea at Feildes Weir) the model was also calibrated against naturalised flows. The model was calibrated using a multi-objective approach comprising of 6 evaluation metrics: Nash Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE), NSE on log flows (log NSE), Mean Absolute Percent Error (MAPE), Absolute Percent Bias (PBIAS), Absolute Percent Error in Mean Annual Minimum flows over a 30 day accumulation period (MAM30), and Absolute Percent Error in the flow exceeded 95% of the time (Q95).
The 500,000 model runs were then ranked by each evaluation metric, the ranks were summed, and the runs were reordered according to this final rank. Finally, in order to prevent uneven trade-offs between metrics, the runs were re-ordered according to thresholds of acceptability.
Reconstructed flow timeseries were then run for the top 500 ranking model parameter sets, using PET (Potential Evapotranspiration) (Tanguy et al., 2017: doi https://doi.org/10.5285/17b9c4f7-1c30-4b6f-b2fe-f7780159939c), and reconstructed daily rainfall data, provided by the UK Met Office.
The modelled data, and the supporting metadata files, were exported from the R software programme as comma separated value files (.csv), and ingested into the EIDC in this format.
The 500,000 model runs were then ranked by each evaluation metric, the ranks were summed, and the runs were reordered according to this final rank. Finally, in order to prevent uneven trade-offs between metrics, the runs were re-ordered according to thresholds of acceptability.
Reconstructed flow timeseries were then run for the top 500 ranking model parameter sets, using PET (Potential Evapotranspiration) (Tanguy et al., 2017: doi https://doi.org/10.5285/17b9c4f7-1c30-4b6f-b2fe-f7780159939c), and reconstructed daily rainfall data, provided by the UK Met Office.
The modelled data, and the supporting metadata files, were exported from the R software programme as comma separated value files (.csv), and ingested into the EIDC in this format.
Licensing and constraints
This dataset is made available under the terms of the Open Government Licence
Cite this dataset as:
Smith, K.A.; Tanguy, M.; Hannaford, J.; Prudhomme, C. (2018). Historic reconstructions of daily river flow for 303 UK catchments (1891-2015). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/f710bed1-e564-47bf-b82c-4c2a2fe2810e
© UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Related
This dataset is included in the following collections
Citations
West, H., Quinn, N., & Horswell, M. (2022). Spatio-temporal propagation of North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) rainfall deviations to streamflow in British catchments. In Hydrological Sciences Journal (Vol. 67, Issue 5, pp. 676–688). Informa UK Limited https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2022.2038791
Smith, K.A., Barker, L.J., Tanguy, M., Parry, S., Harrigan, S., Legg, T.P., Prudhomme, C., & Hannaford, J. (2019). A multi-objective ensemble approach to hydrological modelling in the UK: an application to historic drought reconstruction. In Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (Vol. 23, Issue 8, pp. 3247–3268). Copernicus GmbH. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-3247-2019
Barker, L.J., Hannaford, J., Parry, S., Smith, K.A., Tanguy, M., & Prudhomme, C. (2019). Historic hydrological droughts 1891-2015: systematic characterisation for a diverse set of catchments across the UK.Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 23(11), 4583-4602. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-4583-2019
Chan, W.C.H., Shepherd, T.G., Facer-Childs, K., Darch, G., & Arnell, N.W. (2022). Storylines of UK drought based on the 2010-2012 event. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 26(7), 1755-1777. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-1755-2022
Parry, S., Lavers, D., Wilby, R., Prudhomme, C., Wood, P., Murphy, C. & O’Connor, P. (2023) Abrupt drought termination in the British–Irish Isles driven by high atmospheric vapour transport. Environmental Research Letters 18, 104050. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acf145
Supplemental information
Website for National River Flow Archive (NRFA)
Correspondence/contact details
Dr. Katie Smith
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford
Wallingford
Oxfordshire
OX10 8BB
UNITED KINGDOM
enquiries@ceh.ac.uk
Wallingford
Oxfordshire
OX10 8BB
UNITED KINGDOM
Authors
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1060-9103
Prudhomme, C.
European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts
Other contacts
Rights holder
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Custodian
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
info@eidc.ac.uk
Publisher
NERC Environmental Information Data Centre
info@eidc.ac.uk
Additional metadata
Keywords
Funding
Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/L01016X/1
Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/L010267/1
Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/L010267/1
Last updated
19 April 2024 09:27