Simulated future discharge and climatological variables for medium-sized catchments in Switzerland

Description

Daily discharge and the related hydro-meteorological variables precipitation, snowmelt, and soil moisture are provided for current (1981-2017) and for future climate conditions (1981-2100) for 307 medium-sized catchments in Switzerland. The catchments have a median catchment area of 117 km². The 307 catchments together form a set representative of the climatological conditions and runoff characteristics in Switzerland. The four variables were simulated at a daily resolution using the hydrological model PREVAH. PREVAH is a conceptual process-based model that was run in this study in its fully distributed version on a 500 m grid (Viviroli et al. 2009a). For the calibration, runoff time series from 140 mesoscale catchments covering the different runoff regimes were used. The model calibration was conducted over the period 1993-1997. Verification was performed on the period 1983-2005 using (i) volumetric deviation (Viviroli et al. 2007) and (ii) benchmark efficiency (Schäfli et al 2007) as objective functions. The calibration and validation procedures are described in detail in Köplin et al. (2010). The parameters for each model grid cell were derived by regionalizing the parameters obtained for the 140 catchments with a procedure based on ordinary kriging (Viviroli et al. 2009b, Köplin et al. 2010). The calibrated and validated model was then driven with transient meteorological data (precipitation, temperature, radiation, and wind) representing both reference (1981-2017) and future climate conditions (2018-2099). The data were derived from the CH2018 climate scenarios (NCCS 2018) provided by the Swiss National Centre for Climate Services (NCCS). They were obtained from climate experiments produced with different climate modeling chains, consisting of a global and a regional circulation model each, within EUROCORDEX for three representative concentration pathways (RCP) emission scenarios. Downscaled output of ten climate model chains derived by quantile mapping were considered. The focus was on the chains of the EUR-11 domain with a horizontal resolution of 0.11 degrees (roughly 12.5 km). The climate model chains (GCM, RCM, RCP, and grid resolution) used are listed below:

• ICHEC-EC-EARTH DMI-HIRHAM5 2.6 EUR-11
• ICHEC-EC-EARTH DMI-HIRHAM5 4.5 EUR-11
• ICHEC-EC-EARTH DMI-HIRHAM5 8.5 EUR-11
• ICHEC-EC-EARTH SMHI-RCA4 2.6 EUR-11
• ICHEC-EC-EARTH SMHI-RCA4 4.5 EUR-11
• ICHEC-EC-EARTH SMHI-RCA4 8.5 EUR-11
• MOHC-HadGEM2-ES SMHI-RCA4 4.5 EUR-11
• MOHC-HadGEM2-ES SMHI-RCA4 8.5 EUR-11
• MPI-M-MPI-ESM-LR SMHI-RCA4 4.5 EUR-11
• MPI-M-MPI-ESM-LR SMHI-RCA4 8.5 EUR-11

References:

• Köplin, N., D. Viviroli, B. Schädler, and R. Weingartner (2010), How does climate change affect mesoscale catchments in Switzerland? - A framework for a comprehensive assessment, Advances in Geosciences, 27, 111-119, doi:10.5194/adgeo-27-111-2010.
• National Centre for Climate Services (2018), CH2018 - Climate Scenarios for Switzerland, Tech. rep., NCCS, Zurich.
• Schäfli, B., and H. V. Gupta (2007), Do Nash values have value?, Hydrological Processes, 21, 2075-2080, doi:10.1002/hyp.6825.
• Viviroli, D., J. Gurtz, and M. Zappa (2007), The hydrological modelling system PREVAH. Part II - Physical model description, Geographica Bernensia, 40, 1-89.
• Viviroli, D., M. Zappa, J. Gurtz, and R. Weingartner (2009a), An introduction to the hydrological modelling system PREVAH and its pre- and post-processing-tools, Environmental Modelling & Software, 24, 1209-1222, doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2009.04.001.
• Viviroli, D., H. Mittelbach, J. Gurtz, and R. Weingartner (2009b), Continuous simulation for flood estimation in ungauged mesoscale catchments of Switzerland-Part II: Parameter regionalisation and flood estimation results, Journal of Hydrology, 377 (1), 208-225, doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2009.08.022.