the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Technical note: Surface fields for global environmental modelling
Margarita Choulga
Francesca Moschini
Cinzia Mazzetti
Stefania Grimaldi
Juliana Disperati
Hylke Beck
Peter Salamon
Christel Prudhomme
Abstract. Climate change has resulted in more frequent occurrences of extreme events, such as flooding and heavy snowfall, which can have a significant impact on densely populated or industrialised areas. Numerical models are used to simulate and predict these extreme events, enabling informed decision-making and planning to minimise human casualties and protect costly infrastructure. LISFLOOD is an integrated hydrological model underpinning the European and Global Flood Awareness Systems (EFAS and GloFAS, respectively) developed by the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS). The CEMS_SurfaceFields_2022 dataset is a new set of high-resolution surface fields at 1 and 3 arc min (approximately 2 and 6 km at the Equator respectively) covering Europe and the global land surface (excluding Antarctica) respectively, based on a wide variety of high-resolution and up-to-date data sources. The dataset has been created together with upgrades to the open source LISFLOOD code. The set encompasses (i) catchment morphology and river network, (ii) land use, (iii) vegetation cover type and properties, (iv) soil properties, (v) lake information, and (vi) water demand. This manuscript details the complete workflow to generate CEMS_SurfaceFields_2022 fields, including data sources and methodology. The use of these fields is expected to significantly improve accuracy, detail, and realism of LISFLOOD simulations. CEMS_SurfaceFields_2022 can also be used as input for other Earth system models or for carrying out general statistical analyses across various spatial scales, ranging from global and regional to local levels.
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Margarita Choulga et al.
Status: open (until 08 Nov 2023)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1306', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Sep 2023
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General comments
The authors reported the development of a set of boundary conditions for the global LISFLOOD model at the 3 arc minutes of spatial resolution. The authors’ tremendous efforts to develop such high-resolution global data should be well praised. The manuscript is well-written, and I don’t have much specific comments.
My only concern is whether the manuscript fits the technical note of a hydrology-specific journal (HESS). My honest impression is that the manuscript is too specific and looks like a manual of a model. I never intend to depreciate the value of technical documents, but such documents are generally too hard to read for people who haven’t been deeply involved in that specific model. My assessments of individual chapters are detailed as follows. Chapter 2 explains the boundary condition of the LISFLOOD model, which is highly model-specific. Chapter 3 lists the datasets chosen by the authors. Many of them are well-known and widely used. It provides neither a general review of available datasets nor the know-how of dataset selection. Chapter 4 explains how the chosen datasets have been converted into the input-ready format of LISFLOOD. Unfortunately, this part is hard to read because most procedure descriptions are squeezed into tables. The text might be informative for LISFLOOD users but too concise to read for non-users. Chapter 5 is short, just specifying metadata. Hence, I skip commenting. Chapter 6 discusses the importance of boundary condition data preparation, but it is not mainly on the data preparation itself but largely refers to the entire operation of the LISFLOOD simulation system. My naïve suggestion is that the manuscript better fits with more data or protocol-oriented papers (e.g. ESSD or GMD). Ideally, it is better to be published as a freely available manual or document of LISFLOOD. If the authors wish this paper to be published in HESS, I recommend further emphasizing the general and applicable wisdom to generate a high-resolution global dataset. Perhaps my assessment above might be useful for revision.
Specific comments
Line 105 “The main model’s technical field is ‘mask’”: This part is a bit difficult to read. What do you mean by “technical filed”?
Line 514 “Surface field creation overview”: I think this subsection should be moved to the next chapter.
Line 562: The figure number is missing.
Line 570 Table 3: I believe that the authors are mainly explaining the procedures (the row of transformation). Unfortunately, it is hard to read because the sentences are incomplete. Also, some fields seem totally irrelevant to non-LISFLOOD -users (e.g., standard deviation of elevation).
Line 721 Conclusions: The part is interesting, but it discusses, for example, “simulating long periods (Line 738)”, “better modeling (Line 752),” and others. The description of the model and simulation is indispensable in interpreting this part.
Lines 786- 793: Is this part really needed?
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1306-RC1
Margarita Choulga et al.
Margarita Choulga et al.
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