CAMELS-GB v2: hydrometeorological time series and landscape attributes for 671 catchments in Great Britain

Large-sample hydrological datasets containing data for tens to thousands of catchments are invaluable for hydrological process understanding and modelling. CAMELS (Catchment Attributes and MEteorology for Large-sample Studies) datasets are a family of large-sample hydrology datasets that contain hydro-meteorological timeseries, catchment attributes and boundaries for large-samples of catchments for specific countries or regions. CAMELS-GB was the first large-sample, open access data for Great Britain, consisting of hydro-meteorological catchment time series, catchment attributes (describing topography, climate, hydrology, land cover, soils, hydrogeology, and human influences), and catchment boundaries for 671 catchments. 

While CAMELS-GB, released in 2020, is a valuable dataset, there are important gaps in the current dataset. Firstly, CAMELS-GB only contains daily hydro-meteorological timeseries, when sub-daily timeseries is often needed for flood characterisation in small catchments across Great Britain. Secondly, CAMELS-GB only contains static catchment attributes (i.e. one snapshot of a geophysical property in time) which makes it challenging to use for trend analyses. Thirdly, groundwater is an important resource in Great Britain, yet no groundwater level timeseries are available in CAMELS-GB.

Here, we present the second version of CAMELS-GB which contains new datasets including hourly hydro-meteorological timeseries, groundwater level timeseries, dynamic catchment attributes characterising changes in land cover and static catchment attributes characterising groundwater timeseries and reservoirs. We update the existing data in CAMELS-GB to lengthen the timeseries of the daily hydro-meteorological timeseries and include the latest rainfall and PET data for Great Britain. The data will be made open access and available on the Environmental Information Data Centre.