The HBV-N model was used for a scenario analysis of changes in nitrogen retention and transport caused by alterations of wetness due to land drainage, lowering of lakes, building of dams and climatic variability in a river basin in south-central Sweden (1885-1994). In general, dams were situated in locations more favourable for retention, compared to the lowered lakes. Rather modest conversions of water bodies only changed nitrogen transport by about 3%. The 180-times-larger increase of (mainly) tile-drained agricultural land had, according to simulations, increased the nitrogen transport by 17%, due to reduced retention. However, compared to human-induced alteration of the landscape N retention, the choice of 10-year periods of climatological data had the overriding effect on the calculated nitrogen transport. Weather-induced variations resulted in a 13% difference in nitrogen retention between various 10-year periods. When the model was driven by climatological data from the driest 10-year period (1905-1914), the estimated average annual load was only half of that obtained with climatological data from the wettest 10-year period (1975-1984).

Changes in environmental conditions within a river basin in South Central Sweden (1400 km(2)) and impacts on riverine nitrogen (N) transport were evaluated. A historical database was compiled and the process-based HBV-N model used to estimate flow normalised N loads in 1885, 1905, 1927, 1956, 1976, and 1994, using a standard climatological record (1985-1994). The study shows the value of process-based modelling in environmental impact assessment, by making it possible to assess and integrate the effect of a number of factors, both with regard to human impact and natural climatic variability. Factors taken into account include: the effects of land use, agricultural practices, atmospheric deposition, human dietary intake, use of flush toilets, lowering of lakes, building of dams, and climatic variability. For all years studied, agriculture was the overriding source of N, and changes in riverine N over time mainly reflected changes in land use and agricultural practices. In spite of decreasing N-leaching from agriculture, the net load remained fairly constant between 1885 and 1927, due to reduced N retention. Drainage of agricultural land had a dominating impact on reducing N retention, which increased the N loads, while the effects of the lowering of lake levels and dam building were less pronounced. Household N emission per capita was higher in 1994 than in 1927, as the increased consumption of meat and dairy products alone resulted in a higher increase of the emission than was compensated for with wastewater treatment improvement. In addition, introduction of flush toilets increased the emission from households. In total, the net load in 1976 was twofold higher than that in 1885, 1905 and 1927, due to increased leaching from agriculture, wastewater emission, and atmospheric deposition on lake surfaces. Finally, the impact of climatological variability was assessed, using a 110-yr climatological record. The choice of 10-yr period of climatological data was the factor that had the largest impact on calculated N load.

A participatory methodology, based on dialogues between stakeholders and experts has been developed and tested in the drainage area to Kaggebo Bay in the Baltic Sea. This study is focused on the EU Water Framework Directive, with emphasis on reduction of eutrophication. The drainage area is included in the WFD administrative area of the Motala Strom River basin. A similar approach is now applied in a recently initiated project in the Thukela River basin, with focus on impacts of climate change on water resources. The methodology is based on the idea that a catchment model serves as a platform for the establishment of a common view of present conditions and the causes behind these conditions. In the following steps, this is followed by model-assisted agreement on environmental goals (i.e. what do we want the future to look like?) and local agreement on a remedy or mitigation plans in order to reduce environmental impact (e. g. eutrophication); alternatively to adapt to conditions that cannot be determined by local actions (e. g. climate change). By involving stakeholder groups in this model-supported stepwise process, it is ensured that all stakeholder groups involved have a high degree of confidence in the presented model results, and thereby enable various actors involved to share a common view, regarding both present conditions, goals and the way to reach these goals. Although this is a process that is time-(and cost-) consuming, it is hypothesised that the use of this methodology is two-pronged: it increases the willingness to carry out remedies or necessary adaptations to a changing environment, and it increases the level of understanding between the various groups and therefore ameliorates the potential for future conflicts. Compared to traditional use of model results in environmental decision-making, the experts' role is transformed from a one-way communication of final results to assistance in the various steps of the participatory process.

The dynamic catchment model HBV-N has been further developed by adding routines for phosphorus transport and is now called the HBV-NP model. The model was shown to satisfactorily simulate nutrient dynamics in the Ronnea catchment (1 900 km(2)). Its sensitivity to input data was tested, and results demonstrated the increased sensitivity to the selection of input data on a subcatchment scale when compared with the catchment scale. Selection of soil and land use databases was found to be critical in some subcatchments but did not have a significant impact on a catchment scale. Although acceptable on a catchment scale, using templates and generalization, with regards to emissions from point sources and rural households, significantly decreased model performance in certain subcatchments when compared with using more detailed local information. A division into 64 subcatchments resulted in similar model performance at the catchment outlet when compared with a lumped approach. Adjusting the imported matrixes of the regional leaching of nitrogen, from agricultural land, against mean subcatchment water percolation did not have a significant impact on the model performance.

In the past, hydrologic modeling of surface water resources has mainly focused on simulating the hydrologic cycle at local to regional catchment modeling domains. There now exists a level of maturity among the catchment, global water security, and land surface modeling communities such that these communities are converging toward continental domain hydrologic models. This commentary, written from a catchment hydrology community perspective, provides a review of progress in each community toward this achievement, identifies common challenges the communities face, and details immediate and specific areas in which these communities can mutually benefit one another from the convergence of their research perspectives. Those include: (1) creating new incentives and infrastructure to report and share model inputs, outputs, and parameters in data services and open access, machine-independent formats for model replication or reanalysis; (2) ensuring that hydrologic models have: sufficient complexity to represent the dominant physical processes and adequate representation of anthropogenic impacts on the terrestrial water cycle, a process-based approach to model parameter estimation, and appropriate parameterizations to represent large-scale fluxes and scaling behavior; (3) maintaining a balance between model complexity and data availability as well as uncertainties; and (4) quantifying and communicating significant advancements toward these modeling goals.

A participatory modelling process (DEMO) has been developed and applied in a 350 km(2) catchment in southern Sweden. The overall goal is to improve the dialogues between experts and local stakeholders by using numerical models as a platform for discussions. The study is focused on reducing nutrient load and on the development of a locally established measure plan, which is requested by the European Water Framework Directive. The HBV-NP model was chosen as it can calculate effects and costs for different allocations of several combined measures in a catchment. This paper shows the impact of including local data in the modelling process vs. using more general data. It was found that modelled diffuse nutrient pollution was highly modified when including local know-how, soft information and more detailed field investigations. Leaching from arable land was found to be 35% higher using more detailed information on for instance, agricultural practices, crop and soil distribution. Moreover, the stakeholders' acceptance of model results and reliance on experts was increased by applying the participatory process and involving stakeholders in the modelling procedure.

The Swedish Water Management Research Programme (VASTRA) focuses on the development and demonstration of tools for more efficient eutrophication control when implementing the EU water framework directive in Sweden. During the first half of the programme, models for nitrogen flow were developed, and at present, similar models for phosphorus are under construction (e.g. HBV-P). The programme is interdisciplinary, and scientists are collaborating in actor-games and focus group evaluations including scenario analysis. The scenarios modelled in VASTRA phase 1, show that (i) changed agricultural practices can be the most effective and-least expensive way to reduce nitrogen transport from land to, the sea; (ii) constructed agricultural wetlands may only have small impact on riverine nitrogen transport in some regions, due to natural hydrometeorological dynamics; (iii) removing planktivorous fish may be an efficient way of reducing the algal concentrations in lakes without the undesired side-effect of increased nutrient load to the down-stream river system. In VASTRA phase 11, one of the highlights will be interdisciplinary scenario-modelling of different measure strategies in a pilot catchment of southern Sweden (Ronne a).

Starting from six regional climate change scenarios, nitrogen leaching from arable-soil, water discharge, and nitrogen retention was modeled in the Ronnea catchment. Additionally, biological response was modeled in the eutrophic Lake Ringsjon. The results are compared with similar studies on other catchments. All scenarios gave similar impact on water quality but varied in quantities. However, one scenario resulted in a different transport pattern due to less-pronounced seasonal variations in the hydrology. On average, the study shows that, in a future climate, we might expect: i) increased concentrations of nitrogen in the arable root zone (+50%) and in the river (+13%); ii) increased annual load of nitrogen from land to sea (+22%) due to more pronounced winter high flow; moreover, remote areas in the catchment may start to contribute to the outlet load; iii) radical changes in lake biochemistry with increased concentrations of total phosphorus (+50%), total nitrogen (+20%), and planktonic algae such as cyanobacteria (+80%).

The Baltic Sea is suffering from eutrophication and attempts are being made to reduce nutrient loads. This article focuses on nitrogen transport from southern Sweden (145 000 km(2)), and presents a model approach (HBV-N) that has been used in the national decision-making process for best management practices. Calculations of nitrogen leaching, retention in the freshwater system, net transport to the sea, and source apportionment are presented for the period 1985-1994. Input data were handled in GIS, including results from SOIL-N and MATCH. Daily simulations were made in 3725 subbasins with calibration against measured time series at 722 sites. Diffuse source pollution was normally retained by 10-25% before entering the river network. Lakes normally reduced nitrogen transport by 30-40 kg ha(-1) yr(-1) of lake area. On average, 45% of the annual gross load was reduced during transport, but temporal and spatial variations were great. 75 000 tonnes N yr(-1) reached the sea.

Eutrophication problems in the Baltic Sea have drawn attention to the contribution of nutrients from surrounding countries. By using the HBV-N model in southern Sweden (145 000 km(2)) daily nitrogen leaching, reduction in rivers and lakes, net transport to the sea and source apportionment have been calculated in 3725 subbasins for the period 1985-1994, with calibration at 722 sites against measured time series. On average, 48% of the nonpoint losses from agriculture were reduced during the transport towards the sea, which left about 33 500 tonnes in annual mean net transport. This represents 45% of the total land-based load. Land cover and emissions for the years of 1985 and 1994 were used in two separate simulations of the 10-year period. The normalized gross leakage from arable land in 1985 was estimated to 29 kg N ha(-1) year(-1), which corresponds to 15 kg N ha(-1) year(-1) in net leakage to the sea. In 1994 these transports were reduced by 20 and 15%, and thereby the total load on the sea was decreased by 7%. This is still far from the Swedish goal of 50% reduction. The article presents the spatial variation of nitrogen leakage and retention within the southern half of Sweden, and emphasizes the importance of allocating measures where down-stream retention is low in order to achieve efficiency with respect to the sea. It is shown that the model approach may be used in the decision making process for best management practices in watersheds. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

To reduce eutrophication of the Baltic Sea, all nine surrounding countries have agreed upon reduction targets in the HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP). Yet, monitoring sites and model concepts for decision support are few. To provide one more tool for analysis of water and nutrient fluxes in the Baltic Sea basin, the HYPE model has been applied to the region (called Balt-HYPE). It was used here for experimenting with land-based remedial measures and future climate projections to quantify the impacts of these on water and nutrient loads to the sea. The results suggest that there is a possibility to reach the BSAP nutrient reduction targets by 2100, and that climate change may both aggravate and help in some aspects. Uncertainties in the model results are large, mainly due to the spread of the climate model projections, but also due to the hydrological model.

Water resource management is often based on numerical models, and large-scale models are sometimes used for international strategic agreements. Sometimes the modelled area entails several political entities and river basins. To avoid methodological bias in results, methods and databases should be homogenous across political and geophysical boundaries, but this may involve fewer details and more assumptions. This paper quantifies the uncertainty when the same model code is applied using two different input datasets; a more detailed one for the country of Sweden (S-HYPE) and a more general one for the entire Baltic Sea basin (Balt-HYPE). Results from the two model applications were compared for the Swedish landmass and for two specific Swedish river basins. The results show that both model applications may be useful in providing spatial information of water and nutrients at various scales. For water discharge, most relative errors are <10% for S-HYPE and <25% for Balt-HYPE. Both applications reproduced the most mean concentration for nitrogen within 25% of the observed mean values, but phosphorus showed a larger scatter. Differences in model set-up were reflected in the simulation of both spatial and temporal dynamics. The most sensitive data were precipitation/temperature, agriculture and model parameter values.

The eutrophication problem has drawn attention to nutrient leaching from arable land in southern Sweden, and further understanding of spatial and temporal variability is needed in order to develop decision-making tools. Thus, the influence of spatial and temporal variables was analysed statistically using empirical time series of different nutrient species from 35 well-documented catchments (2-35 km(2)), which have been monitored for an average of 5 years. In the spatial analysis several significant correlations between winter median concentrations and catchment characteristics were found. The strongest correlation was found between inorganic nitrogen and land use, while concentrations of different phosphorus species were highly correlated to soil texture. Multiple linear regression models gave satisfactory results for prediction of median winter concentrations in unmeasured catchments, especially for inorganic nitrogen and phosphate. In the analysis of temporal variability within catchments, internal variables from a dynamic hydrological model (HBV) were linked to concentration fluxes. It was found that phosphorus and inorganic nitrogen concentrations were elevated during flow increase at low-Bow conditions, while they were diluted as the wetness in the catchment increased. During unmonitored periods regression models were successful in predicting temporal variability of total phosphorus, phosphate and inorganic nitrogen, while organic nitrogen and particulate phosphorus could not be predicted with this approach. Dividing the data into different flow categories did not improve the prediction of nutrient concentration dynamics. The results and literature review presented, confirm parts of the present HBV-W model approach and will be useful for further development of nutrient routines linked to dynamic hydrological models. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

There is an ongoing discussion whether floods occur more frequently today than in the past, and whether they will increase in number and magnitude in the future. To explore this issue in Sweden, we merged observed time series for the past century from 69 gauging sites throughout the country (450 000 km(2)) with high-resolution dynamic model projections of the upcoming century. The results show that the changes in annual maximum daily flows in Sweden oscillate between dry and wet periods but exhibit no significant trend over the past 100 years. Temperature was found to be the strongest climate driver of changes in river high flows, which are related primarily to snowmelt in Sweden. Annual daily high flows may decrease by on average -1% per decade in the future, mainly due to lower peaks from snowmelt in the spring (-2% per decade) as a result of higher temperatures and a shorter snow season. In contrast, autumn flows may increase by + 3% per decade due to more intense rainfall. This indicates a shift in floodgenerating processes in the future, with greater influence of rain-fed floods. Changes in climate may have a more significant impact on some specific rivers than on the average for the whole country. Our results suggest that the temporal pattern in future daily high flow in some catchments will shift in time, with spring floods in the northern-central part of Sweden occurring about 1 month earlier than today. High flows in the southern part of the country may become more frequent. Moreover, the current boundary between snow-driven floods in northern-central Sweden and rain-driven floods in the south may move toward higher latitudes due to less snow accumulation in the south and at low altitudes. The findings also indicate a tendency in observations toward the modeled projections for timing of daily high flows over the last 25 years. Uncertainties related to both the observed data and the complex model chain of climate impact assessments in hydrology are discussed.

Since the early 1970s operational flood forecasts in Sweden have been based on the hydrological HBV model. However, the model is only one component in a chain of processes for production of hydrological forecasts. During the last 35 years there has been considerable work on improving different parts of the forecast procedure and results from specific studies have been reported frequently. Yet, the results have not been compared in any overall assessment of potential for improvements. Therefore we formulated and applied a method for translating results from different studies to a common criterion of error reduction. The aim was to quantify potential improvements in a systems perspective and to identify in which part of the production chain efforts would result in significantly better forecasts. The most sensitive (> 20% error reduction) components were identified for three different operational-forecast types. From the analyses of historical efforts to minimise the errors in the Swedish flood-forecasting system, it was concluded that 1) general runoff simulations and predictions could be significantly improved by model structure and calibration, model equations (e.g. evapotranspiration expression), and new precipitation input using radar data as a complement to station gauges; 2) annual spring-flood forecasts could be significantly improved by better seasonal meteorological forecast, fresh re-calibration of the hydrological model based on long time-series, and data assimilation of snow-pack measurements using georadar or gamma-ray technique; 3) short-term (2 days) forecasts could be significantly improved by up-dating using an auto-regressive method for discharge, and by ensembles of meteorological forecasts using the median at occasions when the deterministic forecast is out of the ensemble range. The study emphasises the importance of continuously evaluating the entire production chain to search for potential improvements of hydrological forecasts in the operational environment. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A hydrological-based model (HBV-NP) was applied to a catchment (1900 km(2)) in the southern part of Sweden. Careful characterization of the present load situation and the potential for improved treatment or reduced soil leaching were analyzed. Several scenarios were modeled to find strategies to reach the Swedish environmental goals of reducing anthropogenic nitrogen load by 30% and phosphorus load by 20%. It was stated that the goals could be reached by different approaches that would affect different polluters and social sectors. However, no single measure was enough by itself. Instead, a combination of measures was necessary to achieve the goals. The nitrogen goal was the most difficult to attain. In order to be cost-effective, these measures should be applied to areas contributing the most to the net loading of the sea. This strategy could reduce the costs by 70%-80% when compared with implementing the measures in the entire catchment. Integrated catchment models may thus be helpful tools for reducing costs in environmental control programs.

Measure plans are currently being developed for the Water Framework Directive (WFD) by European water authorities. In Sweden, such plans include measures for good ecological status in the coastal ecosystem. However, the effect of suggested measures is not yet known. We therefore experimented with different nutrient reduction measures on land and in the sea, using a model system of two coupled dynamic models for a semi-enclosed bay and its catchment. The science question was whether it is worthwhile to implement measures in the local catchment area to reach local environmental goals, or if the status of the Bay is more governed by the water exchange with the Sea. The results indicate that by combining several measures in the catchment, the nutrient load can be reduced by 15%-20%. To reach the same effect on nutrient concentrations in the Bay, the concentrations of the sea must be reduced by 80%. Hence, in this case, local measures have a stronger impact on coastal water quality. The experiment also show that the present targets for good ecological status set up by the Swedish water authorities may be unrealistic for this Bay. Finally, we discuss when and how to use hydro-ecological models for societal needs.

This report has been compiled on request of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency to facilitate the discussion with the EU Commission. The EU Commission has announced that it will take Sweden to the European Court of Justice for failing to ensure proper treatment of urban waste water according to the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (Directive 91/271/EEC). In Sweden natural nitrogen removal (retention) in waterbodies is considered as part of the treatment of emissions, when transported to the sea. Nitrogen retention is a well-known phenomenon that includes several natural biogeochemical processes, which permanently remove nitrogen from the water. The effect may be considerable in areas with many lakes. Sweden has 92 000 lakes larger than 1 hectare. It is rather normal with 30-70% nitrogen retention in Swedish lakes and rivers. The main process for natural nitrogen retention is denitrification, which is the same process that is applied for biological treatment in waste water plants. Natural retention is hard to measure, however, and has to be estimated based on several assumptions like so many other fluxes in nature. In Sweden a model system has been developed for large-scale calculation of nutrient transport, including retention, from land to the sea, with relatively high geographic resolution. The system couples field-scale models with catchment models and is scientifically documented and reviewed. It has been applied since 1997 for international reporting to HELCOM. The catchment model (HBVNP) is tuned and evaluated against monitored time-series of measurements where such are available. The nitrogen retention that is calculated with HBV-NP is composed of nitrogen that is permanently transferred to the atmosphere and sediment, and which therefore will not further contribute to the eutrophication of water systems.

Southern Sweden suffers from coastal eutrophication and one reason is the high nitrogen load through rivers. The major part of this load originates from diffuse land-based sources, e.g. arable soil leaching. Effective reduction of load from such sources demand careful landscape analysis, combined with changed behaviour of the stakeholders. This study describes a chain of methods to achieve trustworthy management plans that are based on numerical modelling and stakeholders participation and acceptance. The effect of some measures was unexpected when modelling their impact on the catchment scale. Management scenarios to reduce riverine nitrogen load were constructed in an actor game (i.e. role-play) for the Genevadsan catchment in southern Sweden. The game included stakeholders for implementation of a loading standard for maximum nitrogen transport at the river mouth. Scenarios were defined after negotiation among involved actors and included changes in agricultural practices, improved wastewater treatment, and establishment of wetlands. Numerical models were used to calculate the nitrogen reduction for different measures in each scenario. An index model (STANK) calculated the root zone leaching of nitrogen from crops at four type farms. This generated input to a catchment scale model (HBV-N) and farm economics. The economic impact of different sets of remedial measures was evaluated for each type farm and then extrapolated to the catchment. The results from scenario modelling show that possible changes in agricultural practices (such as tuning, timing of fertilisation and ploughing, changed crop cultivation) could reduce the nitrogen load to the sea by some 30%, while wetland construction only reduced the original load by some 5%. In the most cost-effective scenario agricultural practices could reduce the riverine load by 86 t per year at a cost of 1.0 million SEK, while constructed wetlands only reduced the load by 14 t per year at a cost of 1.7 million SEK. Thus, changed agricultural practices can be the most effective and less expensive way to reduce nitrogen transport from land to the sea, while constructed wetlands with realistic allocations and sizes may only have small impact on riverine nitrogen transport from land to sea. The overall experience is that actor games and numerical modelling are useful tools in landscape planning for analysing stakeholders' behaviour and the impact of measures to reduce coastal eutrophication. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

The reduction of nitrogen fluxes from land to sea is an important task in areas with estuarine or marine eutrophication. Wetland creation has been proposed as one method to reduce nitrogen from streams draining agricultural areas. In this study, a scenario of nitrogen removal in created wetlands was evaluated by mathematical modelling of nitrogen fluxes in a catchment (224 km(2)) in southern Sweden. The scenario was based on topographically realistic siting of 40 potential wetlands with a total area of 0.92 km(2) (0.4% of the catchment area). Nitrogen removal in the wetlands was described with a simple and robust first-order model, which was modified and evaluated against data from eight monitored surface-flow wetlands. However, the modifications gave no substantial support for changing the basic model. For catchment-scale modelling this wetland model was incorporated into a dynamic process-based catchment model (HBV-N). The catchment was then divided to several coupled subbasins, so that the wetland influence on nitrogen load could be estimated separately for each potential wetland. The modelling showed that the 40 potential wetlands would reduce the nitrogen transport to the coast with approximately 6%. Specific removal rates ranged between 57 and 466 kg ha(-1) yr(-1) for the different wetlands, depending on residence time (size and hydraulic loading) and nitrogen concentration in inflow. Due to temperature dependence and seasonal variation in water discharge, significant decrease in nitrogen concentrations mainly occurred during summer periods with low loading. The study illustrates that catchment modelling is a useful method for analysing wetland creation plans, and that wetland creation must cover fairly large areas and be combined with other measures in order to achieve substantial reduction of nitrogen fluxes to coastal waters. Further monitoring of existing wetlands will improve the removal expression and decrease uncertainty. For instance, at present it could not be deducted whether wetlands with low average residence times ( < 2 days) have net removal or net resuspension on an annual basis. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Created wetlands have been suggested as a method to reduce nitrogen transport to the Baltic Sea. This paper presents a dynamic conceptual model for simulation of the hypothetical effect of wetlands on nitrogen export to the coastal zone. The study was performed in the Soder-kopingsan drainage basin (882 km(2)) in southeastern Sweden, discharging into the Baltic Sea. An empirically based routine for wetland retention was calibrated separately and incorporated in the model. Scenarios with different location and size of wetlands were analyzed. It was estimated that conversion of 1% (8.8 km(2)) of this basin into wetlands would reduce the nitrogen transport by 10-16% and that more than 5% (45 km(2)) conversion to wetlands is required to reduce the transport by 50%. It was concluded that creation of wetlands should be considered, primarily, downstream from major lakes, in coastal areas, and where the summer load is a significant portion of the annual load. Some further conclusions from the study were that: i) the net reduction of nitrogen transport per unit area of wetland decreases with increasing total area of wetlands in a drainage basin; ii) the wetland retention efficiency obtained in studies of individual wetlands can not be extrapolated in a linear fashion to estimate the net reduction of nitrogen transport at the mouth of a whole drainage basin; iii) the seasonal hydrological and hydrochemical dynamics are of fundamental importance for wetland retention efficiency, which complicates comparison and extrapolation of results from one region to another.

Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere(1). These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe(2). Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe(3), because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results-arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far-suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century(4,5), suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management.

Reproducibility and repeatability of experiments are the fundamental prerequisites that allow researchers to validate results and share hydrological knowledge, experience and expertise in the light of global water management problems. Virtual laboratories offer new opportunities to enable these prerequisites since they allow experimenters to share data, tools and pre-defined experimental procedures (i.e. protocols). Here we present the outcomes of a first collaborative numerical experiment undertaken by five different international research groups in a virtual laboratory to address the key issues of reproducibility and repeatability. Moving from the definition of accurate and detailed experimental protocols, a rainfall-runoff model was independently applied to 15 European catchments by the research groups and model results were collectively examined through a web-based discussion. We found that a detailed modelling protocol was crucial to ensure the comparability and reproducibility of the proposed experiment across groups. Our results suggest that sharing comprehensive and precise protocols and running the experiments within a controlled environment (e.g. virtual laboratory) is as fundamental as sharing data and tools for ensuring experiment repeatability and reproducibility across the broad scientific community and thus advancing hydrology in a more coherent way.

Open data make it possible to set up multi-basin models for large domains across environmental, climate and administrative boundaries. This study presents new methods for evaluating a number of aspects of multi-basin model performance, while exploring the performance of the E-HYPE_v2.1 model for several evaluation criteria in 181 independent river gauges across the European continent. Embedded model assumptions on dominant flow generating mechanisms are analysed by correlating physiographical characteristics to the flow regime. The results indicate that the model captures the spatial variability of flow and is therefore suitable for predictions in ungauged basins. The model shows good performance of long-term means and seasonality, while short-term daily variability is less well represented, especially for Mediterranean and mountainous areas. Major identified shortcomings refer to the resolution of precipitation patterns, aquifer exchanges, water extractions and regulation. This will guide the work with the next model version for which improvements in input data, processes and calibration have been identified to potentially contribute most to improved model performance. [GRAPHICS]