EGU21-4674, updated on 01 Dec 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4674
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Water-balance response to climate variability, a small-to-large scale Italian dataset

Giulia Bruno1,2, Francesco Avanzi1, Simone Gabellani1, Luca Ferraris1,2, Edoardo Cremonese3, Marta Galvagno3, and Christian Massari4
Giulia Bruno et al.
  • 1CIMA Research Foundation, Savona, Italy (giulia.bruno@cimafoundation.org)
  • 2University of Genoa, DIBRIS, Genova, Italy
  • 3Climate Change Unit, Environmental Protection Agency of Aosta Valley, Saint-Christophe, Italy
  • 4Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, National Research Council, Perugia, Italy

Understanding how deficit of precipitation impacts the hydrological cycle is of growing interest and is essential for water resource management. It has been recently observed that the relationship between precipitation and runoff during droughts is subjected to a shift in the sense that the predicted runoff is much less than the one expected due to the deficit in precipitation. Unraveling why this occurs requires an accurate knowledge of all the components of the water balance equation. However, large-scale and consistent samples of precipitation, runoff, evapotranspiration, ET and change in storage have always been challenging to collect. Here, we hypothesized that blending ground-based and remote-sensing data products could fill this gap. We present a countrywide dataset of catchment-scale water balance, covering the last 10 water years in Italy. Italy shows a broad variety of climatic and topographic features and faced several droughts over recent years. We use ground-based daily runoff data, interpolated precipitation maps, and a remote-sensed daily evapotranspiration dataset from the LSASAF ET product. The ET dataset is additionally compared with flux towers data across the country, obtaining root mean square errors on the order of 30 mm/month. Lastly, changes in storage are estimated to close the water balance. More than 100 catchments - including the major Italian basins - are selected, according to data availability and reliability. These catchments cover a wide range of size, morphologic and climatic characteristics. 

This dataset is a strategic source of information to analyze catchment-scale runoff, ET and storage response to climatic variability across climates and landscapes.

How to cite: Bruno, G., Avanzi, F., Gabellani, S., Ferraris, L., Cremonese, E., Galvagno, M., and Massari, C.: Water-balance response to climate variability, a small-to-large scale Italian dataset, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-4674, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4674, 2021.

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