Dr. Stephan Thober
Leader HydroScientific Software Development group
Computational Hydrosystems (CHS)
Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research - UFZ
Permoserstr. 15
04318 Leipzig
Fon: 0341 6025 2324
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
| 2024-present | DestinE climate adaptation Digital Twin (phase 2), own contribution: providing drought indices for future climates, statistical methods for data streaming (WP leader, 765k€ out of 14M€) |
completed
| 2023-2023 | Calibration of ECLand at multiple sites using MPR technology (PI, 150k€) |
| 2022-2024 | DestinE climate adaptation Digital Twin, own contribution: implementation of a hydrologic model to calculate streamflow (WP leader, 780k€ out of 13M€) |
| 2022-2024 | Copernicus Climate Change Service contract: Multi-model Operational Hydrological Seasonal Prediction Service – Global Scale (PI, 340k€) |
| 2021-2023 | MetaMoSim: Development of tools for creating reproducible simulations on High-Performance Compute Clusters that provide FAIR data. (PI, 200k€ out of 400k€) |
| 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.
2024 (15)
- Bevacqua, E., Rakovec, O., Schumacher, D.L., Kumar, R., Thober, S., Samaniego, L., Seneviratne, S.I., Zscheischler, J. (2024):
Direct and lagged climate change effects intensified the 2022 European drought
Nat. Geosci. 17 (11), 1100 - 1107 10.1038/s41561-024-01559-2 - Chandrasekar, A., Boeing, F., Marx, A., Rakovec, O., Müller, S., Sharifi, E., Leal Rojas, J.J., Samaniego, L., Thober, S. (2024):
Climate adaptation to change in high-flows: Comparison of high-resolution climate model projections
EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU24-9553 10.5194/egusphere-egu24-9553 - Demirel, M.C., Koch, J., Rakovec, O., Kumar, R., Mai, J., Müller, S., Thober, S., Samaniego, L., Stisen, S. (2024):
Tradeoffs between temporal and spatial pattern calibration and their impacts on robustness and transferability of hydrologic model parameters to ungauged basins
Water Resour. Res. 60 (1), e2022WR034193 10.1029/2022WR034193 - Guse, B., Han, L., Kumar, R., Rakovec, O., Luedtke, S., Herzog, A., Thober, S., Samaniego, L., Wagener, T. (2024):
Spatio-temporal consistency and variability in parameter dominance on simulated hydrological fluxes and state variables
Water Resour. Res. 60 (12), e2023WR036822 10.1029/2023WR036822 - Heilemann, J., Klassert, C., Samaniego, L., Thober, S., Marx, A., Boeing, F., Klauer, B., Gawel, E. (2024):
Projecting impacts of extreme weather events on crop yields using LASSO regression
Weather Clim. Extremes 46 , art. 100738 10.1016/j.wace.2024.100738 - Modiri, E., Samaniego, L., Schweppe, R., Shrestha, P.K., Rakovec, O., Kelbling, M., Kumar, R., Leal Rojas, J.J., Martinez-de la Torre, A., Robinson, E.L., Chevuturi, A., Facer-Childs, K., Blyth, E., Sutanudjaja, E., Wanders, N., Thober, S. (2024):
Understanding hydrological model performance through variability analysis of observed water balance components and meteorological forcings
EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU24-17758 10.5194/egusphere-egu24-17758 - Müller, S., Lange, M., Fischer, T., König, S., Kelbling, M., Leal Rojas, J.J., Thober, S. (2024):
FINAM – is not a model (v1.0): a new Python-based model coupling framework
Geoscientific Model Development Discussions 10.5194/gmd-2024-144 - Najafi, H., Shrestha, P.K., Rakovec, O., Apel, H., Vorogushyn, S., Kumar, R., Thober, S., Merz, B., Samaniego, L. (2024):
High-resolution impact-based early warning system for riverine flooding
Nat. Commun. 15 , art. 3726 10.1038/s41467-024-48065-y - Najafi, H., Shrestha, P.K., Rakovec, O., Thober, S., Kumar, R., Samaniego, L. (2024):
Data and Scripts for Advancing a High-Resolution Impact-based Early Warning System for Riverine Flooding (Najafi et al., 2024)
Data Investigation Portal UFZ 10.48758/ufz.14607 - Samaniego, L., Modiri, E., Sutanudjaja, E.H., Shrestha, P.K., Martinez-de la Torre, A., Rakovec, O., Schweppe, R., Kelbling, M., Facer-Childs, K., Chevuturi, A., Tanguy, M., Wanders, N., Kumar, R., Thober, S. (2024):
On the predictability of the seasonal droughts at global scale
EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU24-11049 10.5194/egusphere-egu24-11049 - Schlaak, J., Boeing, F., Rakovec, O., Samaniego-Eguiguren, L., Thober, S., Marx, A. (2024):
[HICAM] climate projection; monthly SMI 1971-2098 in depth 0-30cm, full ensemble (88 members) cdf 1971 -2020, mHM, DE domain [Data set]
Data Investigation Portal UFZ 10.48758/ufz.14922 - Shrestha, P.K., Samaniego, L., Kumar, R., Thober, S. (2024):
Everywhere and locally relevant streamflow simulations in hydrological modeling
EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU24-8839 10.5194/egusphere-egu24-8839 - Shrestha, P.K., Samaniego, L., Rakovec, O., Kumar, R., Mi, C., Rinke, K., Thober, S. (2024):
Toward improved simulations of disruptive reservoirs in global hydrological modeling
Water Resour. Res. 60 (4), e2023WR035433 10.1029/2023WR035433 - Westermann, S.A., Hildebrandt, A., Boussetta, S., Thober, S. (2024):
Does dynamically modeled leaf area improve predictions of land surface water and carbon fluxes? Insights into dynamic vegetation modules
Biogeosciences 21 (22), 5277 - 5303 10.5194/bg-21-5277-2024 - Westermann, S., Bumberger, J., Schädler, M., Thober, S., Hildebrandt, A. (2024):
How grasslands are managed will determine their ability to adapt to increased water scarcity under climate change
EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU24-17711 10.5194/egusphere-egu24-17711
Index:
You could use our publication index for further requests.
2023 (8)
- Chandrasekar, A., Marx, A., Müller, S., Sharifi, E., Leal Rojas, J.J., Thober, S. (2023):
Assessing future water availability using HydroRiver – A use case in the climate adaptation digital twin of the Destination Earth Program
EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU23-5087 10.5194/egusphere-egu23-5087 - 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 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2023.129607 - Demirel, M.C., Koch, J., Rakovec, O., Kumar, R., Mai, J., Müller, S., Thober, S., Samaniego, L., Stisen, S. (2023):
2022WR034193 (Version v1) [Data set]
Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.7931276 - Modiri, E., Samaniego, L., Schweppe, R., Shrestha, P.K., Rakovec, O., Kelbling, M., Martinez-de la Torre, A., Sutanudjaja, E., Blyth, E., Wanders, N., Thober, S. (2023):
Global Budyko water balance assessment application as a diagnostic tool to improve seasonal forecasts
EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU23-14943 10.5194/egusphere-egu23-14943 - Rinke, K., Schultze, M., Thober, S., Mi, C., Cöster, D., Shatwell, T. (2023):
Auswirkungen des Klimawandels auf Talsperren und mögliche Anpassungsstrategien
WasserWirtschaft 113 (6), 20 - 23 10.1007/s35147-023-1811-9 - Samaniego, L., Kumar, R., Zink, M., Cuntz, M., Mai, J., Thober, S., Schneider, C., Dalmasso, G., Musuuza, J., Rakovec, O., Craven, J., Schäfer, D., Prykhodko, V., Schrön, M., Spieler, D., Brenner, J., Langenberg, B., Schüler, L., Stisen, S., Demirel, M.C., Jing, M., Kaluza, M., Schweppe, R., Shrestha, P.K., Döring, N., Müller, S. (2023):
mhm-ufz/mHM
Version: v5.13.1 Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.8279545 - 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, EGU23-7545 10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7545 - 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 10.1038/s43247-023-00714-8
Index:
You could use our publication index for further requests.
2022 (12)
- 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 10.5194/gmd-15-6957-2022 - Bahrami, B., Hildebrandt, A., Thober, S., Rebmann, C., Fischer, R., Samaniego, L., Rakovec, O., Kumar, R. (2022):
Parsimonious Canopy Model (PCM) v1.0
Version: v1.0 Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.6373776 - Bahrami, B., Kumar, R., Thober, S., Hildebrandt, A., Fischer, R., Samaniego, L., Rebmann, C. (2022):
Predicting forest gross primary productivity and leaf area index by coupling light use efficiency and leaf phenology in a parsimonious canopy model
EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU22-8844 10.5194/egusphere-egu22-8844 - Boeing, F., Kleidon-Hildebrandt, A., Rebmann, C., Kumar, R., Samaniego-Eguiguren, L., Marx, A., Rakovec, O., Schrön, M., Thober, S., Müller, S., Schneider, K., Zacharias, S., Bogena, H., Kiese, R. (2022):
[German Drought Monitor] HESS publication deseasonalized soil moisture data [Data set]
Data Investigation Portal UFZ 10.48758/ufz.12541 - Boeing, F., Kumar, R., Samaniego-Eguiguren, L., Marx, A., Thober, S., Müller, S. (2022):
[German Drought Monitor] HESS publication SMI based drought characteristics, GDM-v1-2016 and GDM-v2-2021 setups [Data set]
Data Investigation Portal UFZ 10.48758/ufz.12534 - 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 10.5194/hess-26-5137-2022 - 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 10.1029/2022WR031966 - 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 10.1029/2021EF002394 - Samaniego, L., Kumar, R., Zink, M., Mai, J., Boeing, F., Shrestha, P.K., Kaluza, M., Schäfer, D., Thober, S. (2022):
The Soil Moisture Index - SMI program (2.0.5)
Version: 2.0.5 Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.5842486 - 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 10.5194/gmd-15-859-2022 - Shrestha, P.K., Samaniego, L., Thober, S., Martinez-de la Torre, A., Sutanudjaja, E., Rakovec, O., Kelbling, M., Blyth, E., Wanders, N. (2022):
Assessing skills of the ULYSSES global multi-model hydrological seasonal prediction system
EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria & Online, 23-27 May 2022
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU22-6456 10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6456 - Westermann, S., Hildebrandt, A., Boussetta, S., Thober, S. (2022):
Performance of dynamic vegetation in land-surface models - a multi-site comparison
EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU22-11796 10.5194/egusphere-egu22-11796
Index:
You could use our publication index for further requests.
2021 (5)
- 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 10.1007/s10584-021-03202-0 - 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 10.1007/s00506-021-00766-0 - 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 10.5194/hess-25-6523-2021 - 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 10.1088/1748-9326/abf525 - Shrestha, P.K., Thober, S., Samaniego, L. (2021):
Regionalization of Reservoir regulation parameters using physiographic and climatological predictors
EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 April 2021
EGUsphere
Copernicus Publications, EGU21-5030 10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5030
Journal Referee
Geophysical Research Letters (AGU), Water Resources Research (AGU), Hydrology and Earth System Sciences (EGU), Journal of Hydrometeorology (AMS), Advances in Water Resources, One Earth (Cell)