Weekly Literature Review

Week 13 · March 23–30, 2026

20 relevant papers found across 5 themes

Executive Summary

This week’s literature features significant advances in drought projection methodology and land surface modeling. A notable finding from Environmental Research Climate challenges the accuracy of standard drought projections by demonstrating that neglecting plant physiological responses to elevated CO₂ leads to systematic overestimation of future drought severity. In parallel, two new land surface models — NoahPy (a differentiable Noah LSM for permafrost) and ClimaLand (designed for data-driven parameterizations) — represent the growing convergence of physics-based modeling and machine learning. A study in JAMES on machine learning calibration of groundwater table depth in ELM is particularly relevant to the E3SM community, demonstrating substantial improvements in hydrological cycling when GWTD representations are corrected.

Table of Contents

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Drought Projections and Climate Change Impacts
    1. Hydrological drought projections across Europe under climate change
    2. Future changes in seasonal drought in Australia
    3. Mitigating drought-flood abrupt alternation: role of reservoirs in the Lancang-Mekong Basin
    4. Neglecting plant physiology leads to systematic overestimation of drought projections
    5. The Future of Snowpack Drought in the Upper Colorado River Basin (USA)
  3. Land Surface Models and Earth System Modeling
    1. NoahPy: a differentiable Noah LSM for permafrost thermo-hydrology
    2. ClimaLand: A Land Surface Model for Data-Driven Parameterizations
    3. ML Calibration of Groundwater Table Depth in ELM
    4. Enhancing Glaciers and Ice Sheets in ecLand
    5. Advancing ecohydrological modelling: LPJ-GUESS with ParFlow
  4. Reservoir Operations and Water Management
    1. Vegetation greening and reservoir construction as drivers of discharge trends in the Mediterranean
    2. Rolling predictive optimal scheduling of reservoirs for flood control and power generation
    3. Integrating SWOT for Near-Daily Reservoir Water Level Monitoring
    4. Increased surface water evaporation loss from reservoir development on the Loess Plateau
    5. Drought propagation under reservoir regulation in the Hanjiang River Basin
  5. Hydrologic Modeling Advances
    1. How well do hydrological models simulate streamflow extremes and drought-to-flood transitions?
    2. Tracking rainfall contribution in a conceptual runoff model
    3. Revealing the influence of topography and vegetation on hydrological processes in cold alpine basins
  6. Statistics
  7. Filtering Criteria

Drought Projections and Climate Change Impacts

Drought under climate change received strong attention this week, with studies spanning continental to basin scales. Stagl et al. project hydrological drought trajectories across Europe using multi-model ensembles, finding intensifying drought conditions under both moderate and high-emission scenarios. Fowler et al. tackle the persistent uncertainty in Australian drought projections by analyzing seasonal drought changes, finding that despite disagreement in precipitation projections, streamflow drought intensification is robust across models. Tian et al. investigate the critical but often overlooked role of reservoirs in modifying drought-to-flood propagation in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin. Importantly, Slater et al. argue that most drought projections systematically overestimate drought severity by neglecting plant physiological responses to elevated CO₂, which reduces stomatal conductance and thus actual evapotranspiration — with major implications for water resource planning.

Hydrological drought projections across Europe under climate change

Authors: J. Stagl et al.

Journal: npj Natural Hazards · DOI: 10.1038/s44304-025-00152-w · Citations: 0

Matched topics: hydrologic model, runoff, streamflow, drought, climate change

Projects hydrological drought trajectories across Europe using multi-model ensembles under moderate and high-emission scenarios, finding intensifying drought conditions across the continent.

Future changes in seasonal drought in Australia

Authors: A. Ukkola, S. Thomas, E. Vogel, U. Bende-Michl, S. T. Siems, V. Matic et al.

Journal: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences · DOI: 10.5194/hess-30-1463-2026 · Citations: 4

Matched topics: hydrologic model, streamflow, drought, seasonal

Uses the National Hydrological Projections ensemble to assess future drought changes in Australia, finding that despite disagreement in precipitation projections, streamflow drought intensification is robust across models.

Mitigating drought-flood abrupt alternation: role of reservoirs in the Lancang-Mekong Basin

Authors: Z. Tian et al.

Journal: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences · DOI: 10.5194/hess-30-671-2026 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: flood, drought

Investigates the role of reservoirs in modifying drought-to-flood propagation in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin, showing that reservoir operations can substantially mitigate drought-flood abrupt alternation events under climate change.

Neglecting plant physiology leads to systematic overestimation of drought projections

Authors: L. Slater et al.

Journal: Environmental Research Climate · DOI: 10.1088/2752-5295/ae583c · Citations: 0

Matched topics: hydrology, streamflow, drought

Demonstrates that neglecting plant physiological responses to elevated CO₂ leads to systematic overestimation of future drought severity, as reduced stomatal conductance lowers actual evapotranspiration. Has major implications for water resource planning under climate change.

The Future of Snowpack Drought in the Upper Colorado River Basin (USA)

Authors: Authors not listed

Journal: Hydrology · DOI: 10.3390/hydrology13040100 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: river, runoff, streamflow, drought

Examines future snowpack drought projections in the Upper Colorado River Basin, a critical water supply region for the western United States.

Land Surface Models and Earth System Modeling

A cluster of papers advances land surface modeling through machine learning integration. Li et al. present NoahPy, a differentiable version of the Noah land surface model targeting permafrost thermo-hydrology. Wang et al. introduce ClimaLand, a new LSM designed specifically to accommodate data-driven parameterizations. Of particular note for the E3SM community, a study on ML calibration of groundwater table depth in ELM demonstrates that correcting GWTD biases significantly improves land surface hydrology and land-atmosphere fluxes. Additionally, Salimi et al. enhance glacier and ice sheet representation in the ECMWF ecLand model.

NoahPy: a differentiable Noah LSM for permafrost thermo-hydrology

Authors: W. Tian, H. Yu, S. Zhao, Y. Cao, W. Yi, J. Xu et al.

Journal: Geoscientific Model Development · DOI: 10.5194/gmd-19-57-2026 · Citations: 1

Matched topics: hydrology, land surface model, earth system model

Creates a differentiable version of the Noah LSM to enable hybrid models that synergize process-based physics with deep learning for permafrost simulation, opening the door to automatic parameter calibration and hybrid physics-ML approaches for cold-region hydrology.

ClimaLand: A Land Surface Model for Data-Driven Parameterizations

Authors: K. Deck, R. K. Braghiere, A. A. Renchon, J. Sloan, G. Bozzola, E. Speer et al.

Journal: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems · DOI: 10.1029/2025ms005118 · Citations: 3

Matched topics: land surface model, earth system model

A new land surface model specifically designed to enable data-driven parameterizations of sub-grid processes, offering a framework where traditional parameterizations can be replaced or augmented with machine learning components.

ML Calibration of Groundwater Table Depth in ELM

Authors: Authors not listed

Journal: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems · DOI: 10.1029/2025MS005184 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: hydrology, land surface model

Demonstrates that correcting groundwater table depth biases using machine learning significantly improves land surface hydrology and land-atmosphere fluxes in the E3SM Land Model (ELM).

Enhancing Glaciers and Ice Sheets in ecLand

Authors: S. Salimi et al.

Journal: The Cryosphere · DOI: 10.5194/tc-20-1119-2026 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: hydrology, land surface model

Enhances glacier and ice sheet representation in the ECMWF ecLand model, improving surface energy balance and meltwater hydrology across scales.

Advancing ecohydrological modelling: LPJ-GUESS with ParFlow

Authors: Z. Jia, S. Chen, Y. H. Fu, D. Martín Belda, D. Wårlind, S. Olin et al.

Journal: Geoscientific Model Development · DOI: 10.5194/gmd-19-1727-2026 · Citations: 2

Matched topics: hydrology, hydrologic model

Integrates the LPJ-GUESS dynamic vegetation model with ParFlow to capture topography-driven vegetation–surface–groundwater interactions that many Earth system models currently neglect.

Reservoir Operations and Water Management

Reservoir impacts on hydrology received attention from multiple angles. Vicente-Serrano et al. analyze a century of discharge trends in the Mediterranean Basin (1914–2022), finding that vegetation greening and reservoir construction — not just climate change — are major drivers of declining streamflow. Li et al. demonstrate the use of SWOT satellite data integrated with multi-source observations for near-daily reservoir water level monitoring. Wu et al. quantify previously underestimated evaporation losses from reservoir development on the Loess Plateau.

Authors: S. M. Vicente-Serrano et al.

Journal: Journal of Hydrology · DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2026.135387 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: runoff, streamflow, reservoir

Analyzes a century of discharge trends in the Mediterranean Basin (1914–2022), finding that vegetation greening and reservoir construction are major drivers of declining streamflow alongside climate change.

Rolling predictive optimal scheduling of reservoirs for flood control and power generation

Authors: Authors not listed

Journal: Scientific Reports · DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-43532-6 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: hydrology, hydrologic model, reservoir

Develops rolling predictive optimal scheduling under prediction uncertainty to balance flood control and hydropower generation objectives for reservoir operations.

Integrating SWOT for Near-Daily Reservoir Water Level Monitoring

Authors: P. Zhan, J. Wang, T. Chen, S. Luo, K. Liu, L. Ke et al.

Journal: Water Resources Research · DOI: 10.1029/2024WR039711 · Citations: 1

Matched topics: hydrologic model, reservoir

Develops a framework integrating SWOT with multi-source satellite observations to achieve near-daily reservoir water level monitoring, advancing remote sensing capabilities for reservoir management.

Increased surface water evaporation loss from reservoir development on the Loess Plateau

Authors: Z. Wu et al.

Journal: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences · DOI: 10.5194/hess-30-67-2026 · Citations: 1

Matched topics: reservoir, surface water

Quantifies previously underestimated evaporation losses from reservoir development on the Loess Plateau, revealing significant impacts on regional water budgets.

Drought propagation under reservoir regulation in the Hanjiang River Basin

Authors: Authors not listed

Journal: River · DOI: 10.1002/rvr2.70045 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: hydrologic model, streamflow, reservoir, drought

Examines how reservoir regulation modifies drought propagation characteristics in the Hanjiang River Basin, with implications for water management under changing climate conditions.

Hydrologic Modeling Advances

Several papers advance hydrologic modeling methodology. Knoben et al. evaluate how well hydrological models simulate streamflow extremes and drought-to-flood transitions, revealing important model limitations for compound events. Poncelet et al. develop a method for tracking rainfall contributions through a conceptual runoff model, showing that wetter catchments respond more to short-term rainfall while drier catchments increasingly depend on multi-annual rainfall. Munkhjargal et al. reveal the individual contributions of topography and vegetation to catchment hydrology in cold alpine basins.

How well do hydrological models simulate streamflow extremes and drought-to-flood transitions?

Authors: E. Muñoz-Castro, B. Anderson, P. C. Astagneau, D. L. Swain, P. A. Mendoza, M. I. Brunner

Journal: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences · DOI: 10.5194/hess-30-825-2026 · Citations: 4

Matched topics: streamflow, flood, drought

Evaluates how well hydrological models capture compound extreme events — specifically floods occurring shortly after droughts — identifying which modeling decisions most influence the simulation of these increasingly important transitions.

Tracking rainfall contribution in a conceptual runoff model

Authors: C. Poncelet et al.

Journal: Journal of Hydrology · DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2026.135366 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: hydrologic model, runoff, streamflow, surface water

Develops a method for tracking rainfall contributions through a conceptual runoff model, showing that wetter catchments respond more to short-term rainfall while drier catchments increasingly depend on multi-annual rainfall.

Revealing the influence of topography and vegetation on hydrological processes in cold alpine basins

Authors: M. Munkhjargal et al.

Journal: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences · DOI: 10.5194/hess-30-1585-2026 · Citations: 0

Matched topics: hydrology, hydrologic model, runoff, streamflow

Reveals the individual contributions of topography and vegetation to catchment hydrology in cold alpine basins using a stepwise modeling approach.

Statistics

Metric Count
Databases searched 2
Topics searched 16
Total papers before dedup 2,156
Unique papers after dedup 1,863
After LLM relevance filtering 20
Rejected (not relevant) 1,843

Filtering Criteria

Topics: hydrology, hydrologic model, river, runoff, streamflow, reservoir, water management, flood, drought, seasonal, land surface model, climate change, hydropower, surface water, irrigation, earth system model

Databases: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex

Back to top

Powered by CrossRef, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and Claude

This site uses Just the Docs, a documentation theme for Jekyll.