Historical water chemistry monitoring records from multiple stations between 1959 and 2017

Long-term water-chemistry measurements from multiple Elbe River monitoring stations establish a baseline for carbonate-system variability and were used to assess the alkalinity transport potential. The dataset from 1959 to 1977 was digitized from handwritten notes provided by Dr. Mewius (Kempe 1982). The water chemistry data from 1984 to 2017 (e.g., pH, water temperature, and major ions) was obtained from the Fachinformationssystem (FIS) der FGG Elbe (data source: www.fgg-elbe.de, accessed on 2021-02-26).To generate a single river chemistry time series, data from (Zollenspieker (Strom-km 598,7), Geesthacht (Strom-km 585,9), Schnackenburg (Strom-km 474,5), Boizenburg (Strom-km 559,0), Doemitz (Strom-km 505,0), and Hamburg Waterworks (Strom-km ~623,1) were used. Saturation state of calcite and aragonite were calculated using phreeqpython, a Python wrapper of the PhreeqC engine (Vitens 2021) with pH, water temperature, total alkalinity, and major ions as major input, and phreeqc.dat as database for the thermodynamic data (Parkhurst and Appelo 2013).