Web Services
Streamflow Data Services
The GEOGLOWS model provides forecast and retrospective simulations of river discharge. The retrospective simulation is derived from the ERA5 Runoff data and the daily forecasts use Integrated Forecast System (IFS) 48r1 data. You can access this data in 2 ways; through a web data service for small requests and from an AWS storage bucket (S3) for larger requests. More information about the metadata of bulk downloads can be found on the "Discharge Timeseries" page.
Good Use Cases for the Web Service
Retrieve daily forecasts for less than 50 rivers per day
Getting data on demand for web apps and visualizations
Retrieve retrospective simulation data for less than 50 rivers per day and for time periods after 1 January 1990
Good Use Cases for Downloads and AWS Data
Get retrospective simulation data for any number of rivers in a loop or script.
Downloading GIS datasets
Creating a personal copy of GEOGLOWS datasets.
About the Web Data Service (REST API)
River discharge data are available through a web data service (REST API). The data service is suitable for a few requests for data but is not intended for bulk downloads of hundreds or thousands of rivers. Please do not attempt to download large quantities of data by scripting loops to get data from the web service. You can find documentation for the data service and a Python package which facilitates downloads and performing common analysis and plotting tasks. From the data service, you can get the following:
15-day forecasts for each river presented in mutliple formats
Retrospective data only from Jan 1, 1990 to the near present. Please consider using the Python package and tutorials on accessing retrospective data from AWS S3. The speed and reliability of accessing the retrospective data is much better via AWS than through the forecast data service endpoint.
Return period estimates. (Also available on AWS).
For less than 50 rivers per day
Retrospective river discharge data are available for bulk download from AWS S3. AWS provides instructions for downloading data from S3. See Available Data for the endpoint of the S3 bucket and the Box folder.