Hydrology
New weather and climate research on hydrology, one page per paper.
All summaries
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HydrologySwiss glaciers cushioned the 2022 drought, but total meltwater was lower than in 2003
In the 2022 drought, extra glacier melt offset water deficits in catchments with around 15 % glacier cover, yet shrinking glacier area meant total meltwater was already below the 2003 level in most catchments.
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HydrologyTFA in Swiss rain and rivers rose four to six times since the 1990s; known sources explain part
Swiss rain and river TFA levels have climbed several-fold since 1996/1997, and simulated breakdown of known fluorinated gases explains only about 63 % of the TFA deposited on the Swiss Plateau.
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HydrologyLSTM beats Transformers on standard hydrology tasks, but attention models win on harder ones
In a benchmark of 11 Transformer-type models against an LSTM, the LSTM was best at regression and short forecasts, while attention-based models did better at long-horizon autoregression and zero-shot forecasting.
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HydrologyAgricultural expansion aggravates water shortage more than climate change
Agricultural land expansion, not climate change, is the primary driver of intensifying water crises in arid regions.
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HydrologySurvey of 481 water managers shows reactive drought responses across Europe in 2022
The 2022 drought showed that European water managers see rising drought risk but mostly respond with short-term, supply-side fixes, so the authors call for a binding European Drought Directive.
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HydrologyRainfall-based drought index is the top predictor of hydrological drought in the Huaihe Basin
An XGBoost model predicted next-month hydrological drought category correctly 79.9 % of the time in the Huaihe River Basin, and the precipitation drought index (SPI) mattered most, though it was weak on severe drought.
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HydrologyStand-alone LSTMs cannot predict river flows above a limit set below their training peak
When fed extreme design rainfall, a stand-alone LSTM runoff model hits a ceiling well below flows it saw in training, and its runoff share falls as rain rises, while a hybrid model scales more sensibly.
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HydrologyThermokarst lakes on the Tibetan Plateau thaw permafrost and form through-taliks beneath them
In a Tibetan Plateau lake basin, ground resistivity surveys and borehole temperatures showed that three small thermokarst lakes have thawed the permafrost below them all the way through.
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HydrologySoil moisture falls as precipitation rises in some dry and cold Northern Hemisphere regions
In parts of the Northern Hemisphere, mostly deserts, montane shrublands and tundra, soil moisture can be negatively tied to precipitation, and temperature and vegetation productivity help explain it.
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HydrologyFeeding past streamflow into an LSTM sharply improves Western U.S. streamflow estimates
Giving an LSTM recent streamflow observations raises its accuracy most at the daily scale, while snow observations help only at the monthly scale, mainly in snow-dominated basins.
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HydrologyExtreme droughts in central Chile projected to double in frequency by 2070
Climate models show that extreme droughts in central Chile will occur twice as often by 2070 compared to today, with greater intensity.
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HydrologyWater stress in central Chile has risen for decades, driven mostly by rising water use
Water stress in central Chile has grown mainly because people use more water, and the 2010–2022 megadrought and future drying would push many basins to high or extreme stress.
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HydrologySoil salt area in a dry Chinese river basin held steady while salt severity rose
Satellite maps of the Shiyang River basin from 2002 to 2022 show the salty area changed little overall, but salinization got more severe near reservoirs, irrigated land and downstream water-input zones.