DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15853655
title: TPRD3km: An observation-constrained high-resolution runoff data for Third Pole transboundary rivers

description: Rivers serve as vital freshwater resources and crucial carriers of sediment, organic carbon, etc. Calculating river runoff is essential for water resource planning, flood control, and ecological protection. However, in the high-mountain Third Pole (TP) region, characterized by extensive cryosphere coverage and harsh climate, in-situ runoff observations are extremely scarce, especially for transboundary rivers in southern TP. The complex runoff processes, strongly influenced by snow and glacier melt, pose significant challenges to hydrological modeling. Currently, long-term, high-resolution runoff datasets are still lacking in TP. Here, we employ an observation-constrained physically-based cryosphere-hydrological model, coupled with an energy-balance snow/glacier module, to simulate continuous daily runoff during the period 1981‒2020 over seven transboundary TP river basins. This model is calibrated using runoff observations near basin outlets and validated against daily records from 11 gauging stations. Results show that the model can effectively reproduce the daily streamflow dynamics over the study period in TP basins, with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and correlation coefficients all exceeding 0.67 and 0.83, respectively, and absolute percentage bias (Pbias) within 18%. In addition, hourly-scale validations using discontinuous records yield satisfactory results, with NSE values exceeding 0.61 and absolute Pbias values within 9.5%. Furthermore, the snow and ice modules are validated using reliable remote sensing-derived snow cover and glacier area changes, showing good consistency. Based on the validated model, we generate a long-term 3-km, daily gridded runoff dataset and daily streamflow records for 11 cross-sections, which provide essential support for regional sustainable development and ecological conservation.
description: The gridded runoff data are stored in separate NetCDF4 files for each basin, covering the period from 1981 to 2020. Each file contains daily runoff depths structured in a time×nrow×ncol format, where nrow and ncol represent projected grid coordinates. The data utilizes the WGS 1984 UTM projection system, with specific zones assigned according to basin longitudinal ranges (e.g., WGS_1984_UTM_Zone_43N for the Indus Basin). Additionally, each file includes longitude (lon) and latitude (lat) variables for direct georeferencing, facilitating spatial analysis. The naming convention for runoff is Runoff_bsname_1981-2020.nc, where bsname denotes the name of each basin.

The daily streamflow data are stored in 11 individual NetCDF4 files, each corresponding to a specific gauging station and structured as a one-dimensional time series (time). The streamflow data are named Discharge_cross-section_1981-2020.nc, where cross-section indicates the name of each gauging station.

Supplementary spatial data are provided in the basin_info.rar archive, including ESRI Grid format basin extent files (ws_bsname, where bsname denotes the name of each basin) and a multi-point Shapefile of gauging station locations (outlet_submision.shp). These files can be readily imported into GIS software (e.g., ArcMap) or processed using Python libraries, enabling direct visualization and analysis of basin boundaries and station distributions.