BALTEX (the Baltic Sea Experiment) was launched in 1992 as a Continental-scale Experiment (CSE) of the Global Energy and Water Exchanges Project (GEWEX) within the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). The research focus of BALTEX was primarily on the hydrological cycle and the exchange of energy between the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. The study region of BALTEX is the Baltic Sea and its huge catchment region.
Hydrological data relevant to BALTEX were collected at the BALTEX Hydrological Data Center (BHDC) operating at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) since it’s inception in 1995. Until 2015 BHDC collected data of daily and monthly discharges of around 600 stations in the Baltic Sea region. In 2015, the BALTEX Hydrological Dataset moved from SMHI to the GRDC in order to ensure sustainable operation and regular updates as an integral part of the Global Runoff Database. By release and on behalf of the National Hydrological Services, the former BALTEX stations and flow data are integrated in the Global Runoff Database.
GRDC currently holds river discharge time series data from 662 gauging stations in the Baltic Sea region with earliest records from 1807 and an average time series length of 49 years, with a range from 1 to 212 years.
BALTEX ended in June 2013 after 20 years of successful activity. Baltic Earth inherits the scientific legacy and researcher network of BALTEX and builds on the infrastructure (secretariat, conferences, publication series) and international scientific network of BALTEX (people and institutions). However, Baltic Earth represents a new, more holistic perspective on the Baltic Sea region, encompassing processes in the atmosphere, on land and in the sea, as well as processes evoked by and feeding back on human activity.
Project website:
Preview of stations:
You can access the data by downloading the station catalogue below, copy the GRDC station name(s) or number(s) and paste them into the field “Station Name or Number” in the filter menu of the data portal. A step by step guide is provided in our Navigation guide for the GRDC data portal. The summary statistics provide an additional overview about the dataset.
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| Station Catalogue (XLSX, 61KB) |
| Summary Statistics by WMO region (PDF, 12KB) |
| Summary Statistics by Country (PDF, 14KB) |
| Summary Statistics by WMO basin (PDF, 13KB) |