Development and Application of Global Hydrological Models
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 237
Special Issue Editors
Interests: hydrological model development; flood risk; climate adaptation; extreme floods; economic loss; human displacement; water resources; uncertainty analysis; cost-benefit analysis; flood frequency analysis
Interests: urban flood risk; nature-based solutions; integrated pollution and carbon reduction; source tracing of biogenic elements; urban water system
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: water resources; hydrological modelling; climate change; water resources management; floods
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The development and application of Global Hydrological Models (GHMs) represent a critical advancement in understanding Earth's water cycle at the planetary scale. The development of ISIMIP has significantly facilitated the implementation and advancement of GHMs. Currently, ISIMIP 3a and 3b incorporate several GHMs, such as WEB-DHM-SG (developed by Prof. Wei Qi), WaterGAP, CWatM, and H08, among others. The datasets generated are publicly available (https://data.isimip.org/search/tree/ISIMIP3a/OutputData/water_global/).
Within such collaborative frameworks, GHMs function as large-scale computational tools that simulate key terrestrial water fluxes and storages, such as river discharge, soil moisture, and groundwater recharge, across continents and the entire globe. Driven by global climate and environmental data, GHMs emerged to address questions beyond the reach of catchment-scale models, primarily focusing on the hydrological impacts of global change. Their key applications include assessing global water scarcity, projecting future flood and drought risks under climate change scenarios, and quantifying human interventions like water withdrawals for agriculture and reservoir operations. Furthermore, GHMs are indispensable tools for studying the interactions within the Earth system, notably the linkages between the water cycle, climate (via biogeophysical feedbacks), and biogeochemical cycles.
In this context, we welcome submissions on themes including, but not limited to, the following:
- Global Hydrological Models’ (GHMs) development and validation;
- Flood risks based on GHMs;
- Climate adaptation based on GHMs;
- Water resources assessment based on GHMs;
- Climate change impacts based on GHMs;
- Hydrological extremes based on GHMs;
- Water scarcity based on GHMs;
- Terrestrial water cycle changes based on GHMs;
- Human–water interactions based on GHMs.
Prof. Dr. Wei Qi
Prof. Dr. Pan Yang
Prof. Dr. Yanhu He
Dr. Tianyuan Zhang
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- global hydrological models (GHMs)
- flood risk
- terrestrial water cycle
- large-scale hydrology
- water resources assessment
- climate change impacts
- human–water interactions
- earth system modeling
- hydrological extremes
- global water scarcity
- model development and validation
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