Freely available mean daily discharge series from Czechia: what can be inferred from them?

Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, Hydrology Database and Water Budget Department, Na Sabatce 2050/17, 143 06 Prague 412, Czechia

^* Corresponding author: ledvinka@chmi.cz

Abstract

Most hydrometeorological data from Czechia are still provided for a fee. This especially applies to time series with a finer step than monthly. The fact that the data must be paid with respect to an expert’s appraisement and that the proper licence agreement ratification has to be performed causes a considerable delay in the data transfer to potential customers, unfortunately including scientists as well. Naturally, this time-consuming process is unpleasant to the experts on both sides. Due to a substantial rise of university students’ requests for data, the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute’s hydrologists launched a website from which long mean daily discharge series representing ten selected water-gauging stations can be downloaded. Besides other assessments, the series may play an important role when studying climate change impacts on water resources in Czechia. Therefore, the objective here was to extract from these series some preliminary information on long-term changes such as abrupt and gradual trends caused either by the construction of reservoirs or by climate variability itself. The main tool used was nonparametric trend analysis. Mainly different months were of interest so as to determine if there have been recorded some changes in seasonality. The results may be easily expanded by students.