European hindcast of river runoff based on ICON-CLM

Hagemann, Stefan; Geyer, Beate

European hindcast of river runoff based on ICON-CLM

doi:10.26050/WDCC/EU-hind

Hagemann, Stefan; Geyer, Beate

ExperimentDOI

Discharge HD model HydroPy ICON-CLM river runoff Subsurface runoff Surface runoff UDAG

Summary: 1 Dataset description
Currently, there is a joint effort between the Climate Limited-area Modelling Community (CLM-Community, www.clm-community.eu) and the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) project “Updating the data basis for adaptation to climate change in Germany“(UDAG; Früh, 2023) to downscale an ensemble of selected climate change simulations of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6; Eyring et al., 2016). Different to previous studies, this regional climate modelling ensemble is conducted with the same model version and setup of the Icosahedral Non-hydrostatic (ICON) model used in climate limited-area mode (ICON-CLM; Pham et al., 2021). ICON-CLM belongs to the common class of regional climate models that represent atmosphere and land processes without considering lateral water flows at the land surface, i.e. usually designated as river runoff or discharge. However, discharge is an important component of the global water cycle. Changes in discharge can have a significant impact on the water resources of the respective catchment area (Haddeland et al., 2013; Hagemann et al., 2013). In order to fill the gap that discharge is not provided by ICON-CLM, we used a state-of-the-art river runoff model, the Hydrological Discharge (HD) model (Hagemann et al., 2020), to generate discharges that are consistent with the ICON-CLM output.

1.1 ICON-CLM hindcast
In the present study, ICON-CLM was used to conduct regional climate simulations over the European domain of the Coordinated Regional Downscaling experiment (EURO-CORDEX; Jacob et al., 2013). The selected EURO-CORDEX domain has a spatial resolution of 0.11° (approx. 12 km) and the ICON-CLM model setup was determined from optimisation exercises through model extensions and a novel parameter tuning strategy (Geyer et al., 2026). To evaluate the model performance, ICON-CLM was used to generate a hindcast simulation (ICON CLM EVAL) from 1950-2024 by downscaling the ERA5 reanalysis data (Hersbach et al., 2020).

1.2 European hindcast of river runoff based on ICON-CLM surface and subsurface runoff
The HD model (Hagemann et al., 2020) is a river-routing model that is well-established and implemented in a range of global and regional model systems. The HD model was forced by 6-hourly time series of surface and subsurface runoff from the ICON-CLM hindcast. In the present study, we applied the HD model v5.2.4 (Hagemann et al., 2025) over its European domain (land areas between 11°W to 69°E and 27°N to 72°N) at 1/12° spatial resolution. The resulting daily series of river runoff (HD5-EVAL) covers the full hindcast period 1950-2024.

1.3 European hindcast of river runoff based on ICON-CLM atmospheric data
Analogous to Hagemann and Stacke (2022), the global hydrology model HydroPy (Stacke and Hagemann 2021) and the Hydrological Discharge (HD) model v5.2.4 (Hagemann et al., 2025) were used to simulate daily discharge time series over the European domain at 1/12° horizontal resolution. First, daily atmospheric data of the ICON-CLM hindcast (precipitation and 2 m temperature, downwelling shortwave and longwave radiation, 2m specific humidity, surface pressure, 10m wind) were interpolated to the HD European domain and used to force HydroPy. Here, a restart state of 1950 was taken from a century-long simulation (Hagemann et al., 2024) and used at the start of the simulation in 1950. Then, daily time series of surface and sub-surface runoff from HydroPy (Hpy-EVAL) were used to simulate daily discharges with the HD model. The resulting daily series of river runoff (HD5-Hpy-EVAL) covers the full hindcast period 1950-2024.

Acknowledgments
This dataset was generated within the project “Updating the data basis for adaptation to climate change in Germany (UDAG)” that was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space under grant number 01LP2326D.
Project: coastDat-Land-Ocean-Fluxes (coastDat - Regional Water and Matter Fluxes at the Land-Ocean Interface)
Contact: Dr. Stefan Hagemann (
stefan.hagemann@nullhereon.de
0000-0001-5444-2945)
Spatial Coverage: Longitude -11 to 69 Latitude 27 to 72
Temporal Coverage: 1950-01-01 to 2024-12-31 (calendrical)
Use constraints: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Data Catalog: World Data Center for Climate
Size: 86.82 GiB (93218336342 Byte)
Format: NetCDF
Status: will be continued
Creation Date: 2026-02-04
Review Date: 2026-02-19

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Cite as: Hagemann, Stefan; Geyer, Beate (2026). European hindcast of river runoff based on ICON-CLM. World Data Center for Climate (WDCC) at DKRZ. https://doi.org/10.26050/WDCC/EU-hind

BibTeX RIS

Funding: Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space
Grant/Award No: 01LP2326D - Updating the data basis for adaptation to climate change in Germany (UDAG)

FAIR

F-UJI result: total 76.92 %

Description: Summary:
Findable: 6 of 7 level;
Accessible: 3 of 7 level;
Interoperable: 6 of 6 level;
Reusable: 5 of 6 level
Method: F-UJI WDCC service v3.5.0 metrics_v0.8
Method Description: Checks performed by WDCC. Metrics documentation: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15045911 Metric Version: metrics_v0.8
Method Url: https://www.f-uji.net
Result Date: 2026-02-19

Scientific Quality Assurance (SQA)

SQA - Scientific Quality Assurance 'approved by author'

Result Date: 2026-02-17

Technical Quality Assurance (TQA)

TQA - Technical Quality Assurance 'approved by WDCC'

Description: 1. Number of data sets is correct and > 0: passed;
2. Size of every data set is > 0: passed;
3. The data sets and corresponding metadata are accessible: passed;
4. The data sizes are controlled and correct: passed;
5. The spatial-temporal coverage description (metadata) is consistent to the data: passed;
6. The format is correct: passed;
7. Variable description and data are consistent: passed
Method: WDCC-TQA checklist
Method Description: Checks performed by WDCC. The list of TQA metrics are documented in the 'WDCC User Guide for Data Publication' Chapter 8.1.1
Method Url: https://www.wdc-climate.de/docs/WDCC_User_Guide_Data_v1.pdf
Result Date: 2026-02-17

Contact type	Person	ORCID	Organization
Contact	Dr. Stefan Hagemann	0000-0001-5444-2945	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Author	Dr. Stefan Hagemann	0000-0001-5444-2945	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Author	Dr. Beate Geyer	0000-0001-8017-3136	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Investigator	Dr. Stefan Hagemann	0000-0001-5444-2945	Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
Funder	-	-	Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space

References

[1] DOI Hagemann, S.; Chen, C.; Clark, D. B.; Folwell, S.; Gosling, S. N.; Haddeland, I.; Hanasaki, N.; Heinke, J.; Ludwig, F.; Voss, F.; Wiltshire, A. J. (2013). Climate change impact on available water resources obtained using multiple global climate and hydrology models. doi:10.5194/esd-4-129-2013

[2] DOI Haddeland, Ingjerd; Heinke, Jens; Biemans, Hester; Eisner, Stephanie; Flörke, Martina; Hanasaki, Naota; Konzmann, Markus; Ludwig, Fulco; Masaki, Yoshimitsu; Schewe, Jacob; Stacke, Tobias; Tessler, Zachary D.; Wada, Yoshihide; Wisser, Dominik. (2013). Global water resources affected by human interventions and climate change. doi:10.1073/pnas.1222475110

Is documented by

[1] DOI Eyring, Veronika; Bony, Sandrine; Meehl, Gerald A.; Senior, Catherine A.; Stevens, Bjorn; Stouffer, Ronald J.; Taylor, Karl E. (2016). Overview of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) experimental design and organization. doi:10.5194/gmd-9-1937-2016

[2] DOI Hersbach, Hans; Bell, Bill; Berrisford, Paul; Hirahara, Shoji; Horányi, András; Muñoz‐Sabater, Joaquín; Nicolas, Julien; Peubey, Carole; Radu, Raluca; Schepers, Dinand; Simmons, Adrian; Soci, Cornel; Abdalla, Saleh; Abellan, Xavier; Balsamo, Gianpaolo; Bechtold, Peter; Biavati, Gionata; Bidlot, Jean; Bonavita, Massimo; Chiara, Giovanna; Dahlgren, Per; Dee, Dick; Diamantakis, Michail; Dragani, Rossana; Flemming, Johannes; Forbes, Richard; Fuentes, Manuel; Geer, Alan; Haimberger, Leo; Healy, Sean; Hogan, Robin J.; Hólm, Elías; Janisková, Marta; Keeley, Sarah; Laloyaux, Patrick; Lopez, Philippe; Lupu, Cristina; Radnoti, Gabor; Rosnay, Patricia; Rozum, Iryna; Vamborg, Freja; Villaume, Sebastien; Thépaut, Jean‐Noël. (2020). The ERA5 global reanalysis. doi:10.1002/qj.3803

[3] Früh, Barbara. (2023). Updating the data basis for adaptation to climate change in Germany (UDAG). https://www.dwd.de/EN/research/projects/udag/udag.html

[4] DOI Hagemann, Stefan; Nguyen, Thao Thi; Ho-Hagemann, Ha Thi Minh. (2024). A three-quantile bias correction with spatial transfer for the correction of simulated European river runoff to force ocean models. doi:10.5194/os-20-1457-2024

Is compiled by

[1] DOI Hagemann, Stefan; Stacke, Tobias; Ho-Hagemann, Ha T. M. (2020). High Resolution Discharge Simulations Over Europe and the Baltic Sea Catchment. doi:10.3389/feart.2020.00012

[2] DOI Stacke, Tobias; Hagemann, Stefan. (2021). HydroPy (v1.0): A new global hydrology model written in Python. doi:10.5194/gmd-2021-53

[3] DOI Pham, Trang Van; Steger, Christian; Rockel, Burkhardt; Keuler, Klaus; Kirchner, Ingo; Mertens, Mariano; Rieger, Daniel; Zängl, Günther; Früh, Barbara. (2021). ICON in Climate Limited-area Mode (ICON release version 2.6.1): a new regional climate model. doi:10.5194/gmd-14-985-2021

[4] Hagemann, Stefan; Ho-Hagemann, Ha T. M.; Hanke, Moritz. (2025). The Hydrological Discharge Model - a river runoff component for offline and coupled model applications (5.2.4). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15004456

[5] DOI Geyer, Beate; Campanale, Angelo; Churiulin, Evgenii; Feldmann, Hendrik; Goergen, Klaus; Hagemann, Stefan; Ho-Hagemann, Ha Thi Minh; Karadan, Muhammed Muhshif; Keuler, Klaus; Khain, Pavel; Lawand, Divyaja; Ludwig, Patrick; Maurer, Vera; Petrov, Sergei; Poll, Stefan; Purr, Christopher; Russo, Emmanuele; Schubert-Frisius, Martina; Schulz, Jan-Peter; Singh, Shweta; Steger, Christian; Truhetz, Heimo; Will, Andreas. (2026). Optimisation of ICON-CLM for the EURO-CORDEX domain: developments, sensitivities, tuning. doi:10.5194/egusphere-2025-4726

Attached Datasets ( 4 )

Parent project(s)

coastDat - Regional Water and Matter Fluxes at the Land-Ocean Interface

[Entry acronym: EU-hind] [Entry id: 5369782]