HESS cover
Executive editors : Theresa Blume, Alberto Guadagnini, and Thom Bogaard & Hilary McMillan
eISSN: HESS 1607-7938, HESSD 1812-2116

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (HESS) is a not-for-profit international two-stage open-access journal for the publication of original research in hydrology. HESS encourages and supports fundamental and applied research that advances the understanding of hydrological systems, their role in providing water for ecosystems and society, and the role of the water cycle in the functioning of the Earth system. A multi-disciplinary approach is encouraged that broadens the hydrological perspective and the advancement of hydrological science through integration with other cognate sciences and cross-fertilization across disciplinary boundaries.

Journal metrics

HESS is indexed in the Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, etc. We refrain from displaying the journal metrics prominently on the landing page since citation metrics used in isolation do not describe importance, impact, or quality of a journal. However, these metrics can be found on the journal metrics page.

News

02 Apr 2025 Get involved, become a referee, and help shape the HESS community publication output

We are pleased to announce that a new referee application form is now available. This means that if you are interested in contributing to the peer-review process and supporting high-quality scientific publishing in your community then you can apply today to become a referee. Your expertise can make a difference. Visit the online form here to learn more and join our reviewer community.

02 Apr 2025 Get involved, become a referee, and help shape the HESS community publication output

We are pleased to announce that a new referee application form is now available. This means that if you are interested in contributing to the peer-review process and supporting high-quality scientific publishing in your community then you can apply today to become a referee. Your expertise can make a difference. Visit the online form here to learn more and join our reviewer community.

02 Apr 2025 New co-review option in HESS

HESS now offers a co-review option for referees. Please read more.

02 Apr 2025 New co-review option in HESS

HESS now offers a co-review option for referees. Please read more.

13 Mar 2025 New agreement between California Digital Library and Copernicus Publications

We are delighted to announce a new agreement between the California Digital Library and Copernicus Publications. The University of California will cover 50% of article processing charges (APCs) for manuscripts affiliated with any of their research units. Read more.

13 Mar 2025 New agreement between California Digital Library and Copernicus Publications

We are delighted to announce a new agreement between the California Digital Library and Copernicus Publications. The University of California will cover 50% of article processing charges (APCs) for manuscripts affiliated with any of their research units. Read more.

Recent papers

14 Jul 2025
Comment on "Technical note: An assessment of the relative contribution of the Soret effect to open water evaporation" by Roderick and Shakespeare (2025)
Andrew S. Kowalski
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2814,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2814, 2025
Preprint under review for HESS (discussion: open, 0 comments)
Short summary
11 Jul 2025
Groundwater head responses to droughts across Germany
Pia Ebeling, Andreas Musolff, Rohini Kumar, Andreas Hartmann, and Jan H. Fleckenstein
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2925–2950, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2925-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2925-2025, 2025
Short summary
11 Jul 2025
Hydrological regime index for non-perennial rivers
Pablo Fernando Dornes and Rocío Noelia Comas
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2901–2923, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2901-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2901-2025, 2025
Short summary
11 Jul 2025
High resolution monthly precipitation isotope estimates across Australia from machine learning
Georgina Falster, Gab Abramowitz, Sanaa Hobeichi, Cath Hughes, Pauline Treble, Nerilie J. Abram, Michael I. Bird, Alexandre Cauquoin, Bronwyn Dixon, Russell Drysdale, Chenhui Jin, Niels Munksgaard, Bernadette Proemse, Jonathan J. Tyler, Martin Werner, and Carol Tadros
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2458,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2458, 2025
Preprint under review for HESS (discussion: open, 0 comments)
Short summary
10 Jul 2025
Benchmarking historical performance and future projections from a large-scale hydrologic model with a watershed hydrologic model
Rajesh R. Shrestha, Alex J. Cannon, Sydney Hoffman, Marie Whibley, and Aranildo Lima
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2881–2900, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2881-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2881-2025, 2025
Short summary

Highlight articles

03 Jul 2025
Is drought protection possible without compromising flood protection? Estimating the potential dual-use benefit of small flood reservoirs in southern Germany
Sarah Quỳnh-Giang Ho and Uwe Ehret
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2785–2810, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2785-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2785-2025, 2025
Short summary Executive editor
17 Mar 2025
Meteorological ingredients of heavy precipitation and subsequent lake-filling episodes in the northwestern Sahara
Joëlle C. Rieder, Franziska Aemisegger, Elad Dente, and Moshe Armon
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1395–1427, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1395-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1395-2025, 2025
Short summary Executive editor
27 Feb 2025
CH-RUN: a deep-learning-based spatially contiguous runoff reconstruction for Switzerland
Basil Kraft, Michael Schirmer, William H. Aeberhard, Massimiliano Zappa, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Lukas Gudmundsson
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 1061–1082, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1061-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-1061-2025, 2025
Short summary Executive editor
13 Feb 2025
Creating a national urban flood dataset for China from news texts (2000–2022) at the county level
Shengnan Fu, David M. Schultz, Heng Lyu, Zhonghua Zheng, and Chi Zhang
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 767–783, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-767-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-767-2025, 2025
Short summary Executive editor
08 Oct 2024
Characterizing nonlinear, nonstationary, and heterogeneous hydrologic behavior using ensemble rainfall–runoff analysis (ERRA): proof of concept
James W. Kirchner
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 4427–4454, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4427-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-4427-2024, 2024
Short summary Executive editor

Notice on the current situation in Ukraine

To show our support for Ukraine, all fees for papers from authors (first or corresponding authors) affiliated to Ukrainian institutions are automatically waived, regardless if these papers are co-authored by scientists affiliated to Russian and/or Belarusian institutions. The only exception will be if the corresponding author or first contact (contractual partner of Copernicus) are from a Russian and/or Belarusian institution, in that case the APCs are not waived.

In accordance with current European restrictions, Copernicus Publications does not step into business relations with and issue APC-invoices (articles processing charges) to Russian and Belarusian institutions. The peer-review process and scientific exchange of our journals including preprint posting is not affected. However, these restrictions require that the first contact (contractual partner of Copernicus) has an affiliation and invoice address outside Russia or Belarus.