Climate scenario data for all of CARAVAN shows which regions will be hit hardest by Climate Change

The rise of Large Sample Hydrology has given hydrologist the data and tools to systematically analyze the behavior and characteristics of catchments across the globe: across different climate regimes, geologies, countries and continents, gaining insights in what are local, versus what are global phenomena. With this work we launch large sample hydrology into the future by providing a unified workflow to derive forcing from any CMIP6 climate model and scenario for any catchment available in the CARAVAN dataset. We will present which regions, from a hydrological point of view, are expected to be hardest hit by climate change.

 

We present a reproducible, FAIR-by-design workflow built on the eWaterCycle platform that enables climate change impact simulations using multiple hydrological models across any catchment from the CAMELS and CARAVAN datasets. eWaterCycle is a platform that facilitates open and FAIR hydrological modeling research. Different models are seamlessly integrated into eWaterCycle as plugins using software containers and the Basic Model Interface (BMI). Because of the clear separation between experiment and model, running the same experiment with different models is straightforward.

Recently, we hosted the CARAVAN dataset on a remote (OpenDAP) server and added support in eWaterCycle to access catchment data with a single line of code. Combined with our existing functionality to generate hydrological forcing data from any CMIP6 climate model run, this now makes it easy to perform climate change impact analyses for any catchment in the CARAVAN dataset.

We will demonstrate how any hydrological modeler or researcher can use this workflow today. The workflow consists of a collection of Jupyter notebooks that anyone can use to conduct their own climate change impact analyses. We will highlight how these standardized workflows have enabled undergraduate students to independently carry out impact analyses on a region and problem of their own choosing for their thesis.

This is also an open invitation to anyone interested in performing climate change impact analyses or hydrological modeling using the CARAVAN datasets: eWaterCycle is freely available to use, and we welcome collaborations.