Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 3515–3532, 2018 https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-3515-2018 © Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. ERA-5 and ERA-Interim driven ISBA land surface model simulations: which one performs better? Clement Albergel1, Emanuel Dutra2, Simon Munier1, Jean-Christophe Calvet1, Joaquin Munoz-Sabater3, Patricia de Rosnay3, and Gianpaolo Balsamo3 1CNRM UMR 3589, Météo-France/CNRS, Toulouse, France 2Instituto Dom Luiz, IDL, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal 3ECMWF, Reading, UK Correspondence: Clement Albergel (
[email protected]) Received: 7 March 2018 – Discussion started: 5 April 2018 Accepted: 17 June 2018 – Published: 28 June 2018 Abstract. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather provement over ERA-Interim as verified by the use of these Forecasts (ECMWF) recently released the first 7-year seg- eight independent observations of different land status and of ment of its latest atmospheric reanalysis: ERA-5 over the pe- the model simulations forced by ERA-5 when compared with riod 2010–2016. ERA-5 has important changes relative to the ERA-Interim. This is particularly evident for the land surface former ERA-Interim atmospheric reanalysis including higher variables linked to the terrestrial hydrological cycle, while spatial and temporal resolutions as well as a more recent variables linked to vegetation are less impacted. Results also model and data assimilation system. ERA-5 is foreseen to indicate that while precipitation provides, to a large extent, replace ERA-Interim reanalysis and one of the main goals improvements in surface fields (e.g.