There is plethora of services on the water-relevant sectors which depend on accurate and reliable hydro-climatic information at scales from regional to global. SMHI has developed and setup the Hydrological Predictions for the Environment (HYPE) model to a number of domains to address a number of user (i.e. hydropower, water authorities, emergency response management centres, general public etc.) needs. The model runs operationally at SMHI’s servers for Sweden and the pan-European domain providing open information at different time horizons (i.e. historical records, short range and seasonal forecasts, hydro-climatic projections) to targeted users and the general public.

A recently developed global model setup allows improved water information at different geographic locations, and giving the potential at later state to regionalise the service to other regions. The global HYPE model setup is based on high resolution openly available topography, land cover and river discharge data, including delineation of both lakes and rivers, which makes it better adapted than previous setups for assimilation of EO data representing water level, water extent, evapotranspiration, snow extent and snow water equivalent. An operational application of the global HYPE model is currently in its' final development phase, and will provide on a daily basis, historical and near real-time analyses, as well as medium range and (bi-monthly) seasonal forecasts.