Abstract. Human-controlled reservoirs have a large influence on the global water cycle. While global hydrological models use generic parametrisations to model human dam operations, the representation of reservoir regulation is often still lacking in Earth System Models. Here we implement and evaluate a widely used reservoir parametrisation in the global river routing model mizuRoute, which operates on a vector-based river network resolving individual lakes and reservoirs, and which is currently being coupled to an Earth System Model. We develop an approach to determine the downstream area over which to aggregate irrigation water demand per reservoir. The implementation of managed reservoirs is evaluated by comparing to simulations ignoring inland waters, and simulations with reservoirs represented as natural lakes, using (i) local simulations for 26 individual reservoirs driven by observed inflows, and (ii) global-scale simulations driven by runoff from the Community Land Model. The local simulations show a clear added value of the reservoir parametrisation, especially for simulating storage for large reservoirs with a multi-year storage capacity. In the global-scale application, the implementation of reservoirs shows an improvement in outflow and storage compared to the no-reservoir simulation, but compared to the natural lake parametrisation, an overall similar performance is found. This lack of impact could be attributed to biases in simulated river discharge, mainly originating from biases in simulated runoff from the Community Land Model. Finally, the comparison of modelled monthly streamflow indices against observations highlights that the inclusion of dam operations improves the streamflow simulation compared to ignoring lakes and reservoirs. This study overall underlines the need to further develop and test water management parametrisations, as well as to improve runoff simulations for advancing the representation of anthropogenic interference with the terrestrial water cycle in Earth System Models.

Abstract. Human-controlled reservoirs have a large influence on the global water cycle. While global hydrological models use generic parameterizations to model dam operations, the representation of reservoir regulation is still lacking in many Earth system models. Here we implement and evaluate a widely used reservoir parametrization in the global river-routing model mizuRoute, which operates on a vector-based river network resolving individual lakes and reservoirs and is currently being coupled to an Earth system model. We develop an approach to determine the downstream area over which to aggregate irrigation water demand per reservoir. The implementation of managed reservoirs is evaluated by comparing them to simulations ignoring inland waters and simulations with reservoirs represented as natural lakes using (i) local simulations for 26 individual reservoirs driven by observed inflows and (ii) global-domain simulations driven by runoff from the Community Land Model. The local simulations show the clear added value of the reservoir parametrization, especially for simulating storage for large reservoirs with a multi-year storage capacity. In the global-domain application, the implementation of reservoirs shows an improvement in outflow and storage compared to the no-reservoir simulation, but a similar performance is found compared to the natural lake parametrization. The limited impact of reservoirs on skill statistics could be attributed to biases in simulated river discharge, mainly originating from biases in simulated runoff from the Community Land Model. Finally, the comparison of modelled monthly streamflow indices against observations highlights that including dam operations improves the streamflow simulation compared to ignoring lakes and reservoirs. This study overall underlines the need to further develop and test runoff simulations and water management parameterizations in order to improve the representation of anthropogenic interference of the terrestrial water cycle in Earth system models.

Reservoir expansion over the last century has largely affected downstream flow characteristics. Yet very little is known about the impacts of reservoir expansion on the climate. Here, we implement reservoir construction in the Community Land Model by enabling dynamical lake area changes, while conserving mass and energy. Transient global lake and reservoir extent are prescribed from the HydroLAKES and Global Reservoir and Dam databases. Land-only simulations covering the 20th century with reservoir expansion enabled, highlight increases in terrestrial water storage and decreases in albedo matching the increase in open water area. The comparison of coupled simulations including and excluding reservoirs shows only limited influence of reservoirs on global temperatures and the surface energy balance, but demonstrates substantial responses locally, in particular where reservoirs make up a large fraction of the grid cell. In those locations, reservoirs dampen the diurnal temperature range by up to −1.5 K (for reservoirs covering >15% of the grid cell), reduce temperature extremes, and moderate the seasonal temperature cycle. This study provides a first step towards a coupled representation of reservoirs in Earth System Models.

Abstract. Over recent decades, the global population has been rapidly increasing and human activities have altered terrestrial water fluxes to an unprecedented extent. The phenomenal growth of the human footprint has significantly modified hydrological processes in various ways (e.g. irrigation, artificial dams, and water diversion) and at various scales (from a watershed to the globe). During the early 1990s, awareness of the potential for increased water scarcity led to the first detailed global water resource assessments. Shortly thereafter, in order to analyse the human perturbation on terrestrial water resources, the first generation of large-scale hydrological models (LHMs) was produced. However, at this early stage few models considered the interaction between terrestrial water fluxes and human activities, including water use and reservoir regulation, and even fewer models distinguished water use from surface water and groundwater resources. Since the early 2000s, a growing number of LHMs have incorporated human impacts on the hydrological cycle, yet the representation of human activities in hydrological models remains challenging. In this paper we provide a synthesis of progress in the development and application of human impact modelling in LHMs. We highlight a number of key challenges and discuss possible improvements in order to better represent the human–water interface in hydrological models.