Dr. Stephan Thober
Leader HydroScientific Software Development group
Computational Hydrosystems (CHS)
Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research - UFZ
Permoserstr. 15
04318 Leipzig
Fon: 0341 235 482324
Fax: 0341 235 1939
My work
Currently, I am a group leader of the HydroScientific Development (HSD) group the HSD group. In this group, we maintain and further develop the mesoscale Hydrologic Model (mHM) and associated tools. I am currently also a visiting scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) and serve as work package leader and service manager in the Ulysses project funded by the European Copernicus Climate Change program.
Further, I am interested in the representation of hydrologic processes within hydrologic and land-surface models, in particular their parametrization. I evaluate a multiscale Parameter Regionalization technique (MPR), presented first for the mesoscale Hydrologic Model (mHM), inside the state-of-the-art land-surface models.
In the past, I lead the HOKLIM project, which investigated high-resolution climate projection for Europe with a focus on different levels of global warming (i.e., 1.5° K, 2° K, and 3 °K).
In my PhD thesis, I worked on the statistical downscaling of meteorological variables (i.e. precipitation and temperature) from climate models to hydrological models. The goal is to generate synthetic high-resolution fields that have the same statistical properties as observations.
Career
| 2019-present | Group leader Hydro-Scientific Software Development, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ |
| 2017-2018 | Project leader, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ |
| 2015-2017 | Postdoc, EDgE - End-to-end Demonstrator for improved decision making in the water sector in Europe: responsible for the application of Noah-MP and pre-processing of meteorological data including downscaling of seasonal forecasts and climate projections |
| 2011-2015 | PhD student, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ and Friedrich Schiller University of Jena |
Education
| 2016 | PhD, Geosciences, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany |
| 2010 | Diploma, Mathematics, University Greifswald, Germany |
Funding
| 2023-present | Calibration of ECLand at multiple sites using MPR technology (PI, 150k€) |
| 2022-present | DestinE climate adaptation Digital Twin, own contribution: implementation of a hydrologic model to calculate streamflow (WP leader, 780k€ out of 13M€) |
| 2022-present | Copernicus Climate Change Service contract: Multi-model Operational Hydrological Seasonal Prediction Service – Global Scale (PI, 340k€) |
| 2021-present | MetaMoSim: Development of tools for creating reproducible simulations on High-Performance Compute Clusters that provide FAIR data. (PI, 200k€ out of 400k€) |
completed
| 2019-2021 | Ulysses: The development of a global seasonal hydrologic multi-model forecasting system. (service manager and WP leader, ~300k€) |
| 2017-2018 |
HOKLIM: High-resolution Climate Indicators for 1.5 Degree Global Warming (PI, ~260k€) |
Publications
Index:
You could use our publication index for further requests.
2023 (3)
- Chevuturi, A., Tanguy, M., Facer-Childs, K., Martinez-de la Torre, A., Sarkar, S., Thober, S., Samaniego, L., Rakovec, O., Kelbling, M., Sutanudjaja, E.H., Wanders, N., Blyth, E. (2023):
Improving global hydrological simulations through bias-correction and multi-model blending
J. Hydrol. 621 , art. 129607
full text (doi) - Shrestha, P.K., Samaniego, L., Rakovec, O., Thober, S. (2023):
The quest for scalable hydrological system for reservoir modeling
EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, p. EGU23-7545
full text (doi) - Tarasova, L., Lun, D., Merz, R., Blöschl, G., Basso, S., Bertola, M., Miniussi, A., Rakovec, O., Samaniego, L., Thober, S., Kumar, R. (2023):
Shifts in flood generation processes exacerbate regional flood anomalies in Europe
Commun. Earth Environ. 4 , art. 49
full text (doi)
Index:
You could use our publication index for further requests.
2022 (5)
- Bahrami, B., Hildebrandt, A., Thober, S., Rebmann, C., Fischer, R., Samaniego, L., Rakovec, O., Kumar, R. (2022):
Developing a parsimonious canopy model (PCM v1.0) to predict forest gross primary productivity and leaf area index of deciduous broad-leaved forest
Geosci. Model Dev. 15 (18), 6957 - 6984
full text (doi) - Boeing, F., Rakovec, O., Kumar, R., Samaniego, L., Schrön, M., Hildebrandt, A., Rebmann, C., Thober, S., Müller, S., Zacharias, S., Bogena, H., Schneider, K., Kiese, R., Attinger, S., Marx, A. (2022):
High-resolution drought simulations and comparison to soil moisture observations in Germany
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 26 (19), 5137 - 5161
full text (doi) - Feigl, M., Thober, S., Schweppe, R., Herrnegger, M., Samaniego, L., Schulz, K. (2022):
Automatic regionalization of model parameters for hydrological models
Water Resour. Res. 58 (12), e2022WR031966
full text (doi) - Rakovec, O., Samaniego, L., Hari, V., Markonis, Y., Moravec, V., Thober, S., Hanel, M., Kumar, R. (2022):
The 2018–20 multi-year drought sets a new benchmark in Europe
Earth Future 10 (3), e2021EF002394
full text (doi) - Schweppe, R., Thober, S., Müller, S., Kelbling, M., Kumar, R., Attinger, S., Samaniego, L. (2022):
MPR 1.0: A stand-alone multiscale parameter regionalization tool for improved parameter estimation of land surface models
Geosci. Model Dev. 15 (2), 859 - 882
full text (doi)
Index:
You could use our publication index for further requests.
2021 (4)
- Elkouk, A., El Morjani, Z.E.A., Pokhrel, Y., Chehbouni, A., Sifeddine, A., Thober, S., Bouchaou, L. (2021):
Multi-model ensemble projections of soil moisture drought over North Africa and the Sahel region under 1.5, 2, and 3 °C global warming
Clim. Change 167 (3-4), art. 52
full text (doi) - Feigl, M., Herrnegger, M., Schweppe, R., Thober, S., Klotz, D., Samaniego, L., Schulz, K. (2021):
Regionalisierung hydrologischer Modelle mit Function Space Optimization. Regionalization of hydrological models using function space optimization
Österreichische Wasser- und Abfallwirtschaft 73 (7-8), 281 - 294
full text (doi) - Peichl, M., Thober, S., Samaniego, L., Hansjürgens, B., Marx, A. (2021):
Machine learning methods to assess the effects of a non-linear damage spectrum taking into account soil moisture on winter wheat yields in Germany
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 25 (12), 6523 - 6545
full text (doi) - Saha, T.R., Shrestha, P.K., Rakovec, O., Thober, S., Samaniego, L. (2021):
A drought monitoring tool for South Asia
Environ. Res. Lett. 16 (5), art. 054014
full text (doi)
Journal Referee
Geophysical Research Letters (AGU), Water Resources Research (AGU), Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (EGU), Journal of Hydrometeorology (AMS)