Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Hydrology
Skilful probabilistic predictions of UK floods months ahead using machine learning models trained on multimodel ensemble climate forecasts
Published: 2024-07-12
Subjects: Climate, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Seasonal streamflow forecasts are an important component of flood risk management. Hybrid forecasting methods that predict seasonal streamflow using machine learning models driven by climate model outputs are currently underexplored, yet have some important advantages over traditional approaches using hydrological models. Here we develop a hybrid subseasonal to seasonal streamflow forecasting [...]
Increasingly seasonal jet stream raises risk of co-occurring flooding and extreme wind in Great Britain
Published: 2024-07-03
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Hydrology, Multivariate Analysis
Insurers and risk managers for critical infrastructure such as transport or power networks typically do not account for flooding and extreme winds happening at the same time in their quantitative risk assessments. We explore this potentially critical underestimation of risk from these co-occurring hazards through studying events using the regional 12 km resolution UK Climate Projections for a [...]
Machine Learning-based Hydrological Models for Flash Floods: A Systematic Literature Review
Published: 2024-07-01
Subjects: Hydrology
Flash floods are critical events for emergency management, yet their modeling remains highly challenging, even in smart cities approaches. Physically based hydrological models are often unsuitable at small spatiotemporal scales due to their computational complexity and dependence on detailed local parameters, which are rarely available during flash floods. With the growing availability of [...]
An Immersive Hydroinformatics Framework with Extended Reality for Enhanced Visualization and Simulation of Hydrologic Data
Published: 2024-06-15
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Hydrology
This study introduces a novel framework, with the use of Extended Reality (XR) systems in hydrology, particularly focusing on immersive visualization of hydrologic data for enhanced environmental planning and decision-making. The study details the shift from traditional two-dimensional data visualization methods in hydrology to more advanced XR technologies, including virtual and augmented [...]
Exploring coastal climate adaptation through storylines: Insights from Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique
Published: 2024-06-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Coastal settlements, facing increasing flood risk from Tropical Cyclones (TCs) under climate change, need local and detailed climate information for effective adaptation. Analysis of historical events and their impacts provides such information. This study uses storylines to evaluate adaptation strategies, focusing on Cyclone Idai’s impact on Beira, Mozambique, under different climate [...]
Integrating Conversational AI Agents for Enhanced Water Quality Analytics: Development of a Novel Data Expert System
Published: 2024-06-01
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Civil Engineering, Databases and Information Systems, Environmental Engineering, Hydrology, Software Engineering
Despite advancements in environmental monitoring, the gap between data collection and user-friendly data interpretation remains a significant challenge, especially in the domain of water quality management. This paper introduces the Artificial Intelligence Data Expert (AI-DE), a novel data analytics system that is designed to facilitate on-demand analysis of time-series sensor data related to [...]
A Comprehensive Evaluation of Multimodal Large Language Models in Hydrological Applications
Published: 2024-05-25
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Environmental Monitoring, Hydrology
Large Language Models (LLMs) combined with visual foundation models have demonstrated remarkable advancements, achieving a level of intelligence comparable to human capabilities. In this study, we conduct an analysis of the latest Multimodal LLMs (MLLMs), specifically Multimodal-GPT, GPT-4 Vision, Gemini and LLaVa, focusing on their application in the hydrology domain. The hydrology domain holds [...]
Rising temperatures drive lower summer minimum flows across hydrologically diverse catchments in British Columbia
Published: 2024-05-25
Subjects: Hydrology, Water Resource Management
Excessively low stream flows harm ecosystems and societies, so two key goals of low-flow hydrology are to understand their drivers and to predict their severity and frequency. We show that linear regressions can accomplish both goals across diverse catchments. We analyse 230 unregulated moderate to high relief catchments across rainfall-dominated, hybrid, snowmelt-dominated, and glacial regimes [...]
Archetypal flow regime change classes as signatures of anthropogenic drivers of global streamflow alterations
Published: 2024-05-14
Subjects: Hydrology
Streamflow – a key component of the water cycle – is experiencing drastic alteration due to human actions. While existing studies have widely assessed the global extent and degree of this change, understanding of its drivers has been limited because previous global-scale approaches have largely relied on modelled hypothetical scenarios. Here, we overcome these limitations by providing a [...]
A Review of Machine Learning in Snow Water Equivalent Monitoring
Published: 2024-05-09
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
In recent years, the scientific community focused on snow dynamics has witnessed a surge in efforts aimed at enhancing Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) monitoring capabilities, largely propelled by the incorporation of Machine Learning (ML) techniques. This comprehensive review delves into the current state of research within this evolving domain, shedding light on the indispensable role of precise [...]
Tackling water table depth modeling via machine learning: From proxy observations to verifiability
Published: 2024-05-02
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Hydrology
Spatial patterns of water table depth (WTD) play a crucial role in shaping ecological resilience, hydrological connectivity, and human-centric systems. Generally, a large-scale (e.g., continental or global) continuous map of static WTD can be simulated using either physically-based (PB) or machine learning-based (ML) models. We construct three fine-resolution (500 m) ML simulations of WTD, using [...]
Quantifying water availability in basins holding the majority of global lithium resources
Published: 2024-04-24
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
More than half the world’s lithium resources are found in brine aquifers in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia. Lithium brine processing requires freshwater, so as lithium exploration increases, accurate estimates of freshwater availability are critical for water management decisions in this region with limited water resources. Here we calculate modern freshwater inflows, such as groundwater recharge [...]
Evaluation of the METRIC and TSEB remote sensing evapotranspiration models in the floodplain area of the Thaya and Morava Rivers
Published: 2024-04-24
Subjects: Hydrology, Other Earth Sciences, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences
Study region: Floodplain ecosystem region at the confluence of the Morava and Thaya Rivers, Czech Republic. Study focus: Accurate determination of actual evapotranspiration (ETa) is essential for understanding surface hydrological conditions. The aim of this study was to evaluate two remote sensing models, METRIC and TSEB, for estimating ETa and energy fluxes in two ecosystems using the eddy [...]
Limited role of discharge in global river plastic transport
Published: 2024-04-23
Subjects: Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
River plastic transport has been assumed to be driven by river discharge, although observational data does often not support this. We propose a new perspective that describes plastic transport as function of plastic availability and transport capacity. Plastic transport is under most circumstances driven by plastic availability, which is largely disconnected from river discharge. However, when [...]
Urbanization vs climate drivers: investigating changes in fluvial floods in Poland
Published: 2024-04-11
Subjects: Hydrology
Fluvial floods are one of the most severe natural hazards. Changes in flood behaviour result from an interplay of climatic and human factors. Urbanization, with increasing land imperviousness, is the most critical human factor. This study investigates the effect of urbanization vs climate drivers on river floods in Poland, using the paired catchment approach. We used daily river flow data from [...]