Improved river discharge modelling
Changes in the sea shelf can only be accurately predicted if researchers are able to carefully model river discharge across the whole of Europe. This big data endeavour requires improved data collection and management, as well as careful validation using mathematical estimates. 'Operational pan-European river runoff' (OPERR) was an EU-funded project dedicated to providing improved data and modelling services for regional and national climate modelling institutions. Achieving this goal requires implementation of data support tasks, data validation and some modelling work. The first project objective was to collect, collate and clean river runoff data for use in modelling applications. Several prior runoff projects around Europe provided the information for the simulations. OPERR's second objective was to validate these data using hindcasting (estimating past values to test the model) for various areas in Europe. Overall, the data closely predicted the actual values, with a general trend of underestimation of the total runoff. Short-term variability, in particular, was well predicted. Project work has thus provided a valuable toolset. Data generated can now be used for a range of modelling applications, which will support research, environmental policy and economic activities.
