Naturalized daily discharge data for major river gauges in Yenisei river basin (1956-2019)

We introduce a new Arctic daily discharge data set covering 8 major gauges in the Yenisei drainage basin, largest in the pan-Arctic. All gauges are under significant influence of reservoir regulation. The data file includes two types of discharge data: 1) observed daily discharge values officially published by Roshydromet and 2) modeled “naturalized” daily discharge. The “naturalized” discharge means discharge values with excluded human impact. The naturalized data were used along with tree-ring data to reconstruct long-term annual discharge records. The data can be used in hydro-climatological analysis to understand interactions between climate and hydrology. A specially developed Hydrograph Routing Model (HRM) was used to eliminate effects of reservoirs and other human impact from discharge records. The model routes observed daily hydrographs from unregulated upstream gauges in the downstream direction using a Duhamel integral approach and ‘naturalizes’ the river flow (1956-2019). This method provides more accurate hydrograph simulations than water balance modelling approaches for hydrograph simulation as it uses only observed river discharge which is the most accurately measured component of the hydrological cycle. The HRM was tested over the unregulated period (before 1957) and showed good results for all reconstructed gauges in the Yenisei basin.