CAMELS-GB: Hydrometeorological time series and landscape attributes for 671 catchments in Great Britain
Gemma Coxon, Nans Addor, John P. Bloomfield, Jim Freer, Matthew Fry, Jamie Hannaford, Nicholas Howden, Rosanna Lane, Melinda Lewis, E. L. Robinson, Thorsten Wagener, Ross Woods
Abstract
Abstract. We present the first large-sample catchment hydrology dataset for Great Britain, CAMELS-GB (Catchment Attributes and MEteorology for Large-sample Studies). CAMELS-GB collates river flows, catchment attributes and catchment boundaries from the UK National River Flow Archive together with a suite of new meteorological timeseries and catchment attributes. These data are provided for 671 catchments that cover a wide range of climatic, hydrological, landscape and human management characteristics across Great Britain. Daily timeseries covering 1970–2015 (a period including several hydrological extreme episodes) are provided for a range of hydro-meteorological variables including rainfall, potential evapotranspiration, temperature, radiation, humidity and river flow. A comprehensive set of catchment attributes are quantified including topography, climate, hydrology, land cover, soils and hydrogeology. Importantly, we also derive human management attributes (including attributes summarising abstractions, returns and reservoir capacity in each catchment), as well as attributes describing the quality of the flow data including the first set of discharge uncertainty estimates for Great Britain. CAMELS-GB (Coxon et al, 2020; available at https://doi.org/10.5285/8344e4f3-d2ea-44f5-8afa-86d2987543a9) is intended for the community as a publicly available, easily accessible dataset to use in a wide range of environmental and modelling analyses.