Data-sets and Scripts alongside the Environmental Research Letters Publication ERL-116852. "Increasing influence of evapotranspiration on prolonged water storage recovery in Germany" Abstract: Central Europe, including Germany, has faced exceptional multi-year terrestrial water storage (TWS) deficits since 2018, negatively impacting various sectors such as forestry, energy production, and drinking water supply. Currently, the understanding of the recovery dynamics behind such extreme events is limited, which hampers accurate water management decisions. We used a simulation of the mesoscale hydrological model (mHM) over the last 257 years (1766–2022) to provide the first long-term perspective on the dynamics of the TWS deficit recovery in Germany. The results show that severe TWS deficits surpassing a peak deficit of -42 mm (-15 km3 ) exhibit large variability in recovery times (3–31 months). The 2018–2021 TWS deficit period was unprecedented in terms of recovery time (31 months),mean intensity and associated bi-decadal negative trends. In recent decades, we identified increased evapotranspiration (E) fluxes that have impacted TWS dynamics in Germany. Increased E flux anomalies contributed to prolonged TWS recovery, given that the TWS deficit did not quickly recover through above-average precipitation (P ). An extreme TWS deficit similar to that in 2018 was recovered by above-average precipitation within three months in the winter of 1947–1948. Our research contributes to an improved understanding of the dynamics and drivers of TWS deficit recovery. Description of the methodology and data-sets can be found in the manuscript and supplements. included data-sets: --------------------------------- Filename: "mHM_Fluxes_States_ger.nc" Description: monthly mHM Simulations 1776 - 2022: --------------------------------- Filename: "data_deficit_TWS_Casty-CRU-EOBS_1766_2022_1766-01-01-2022-12-31_mm.nc" Description: - monthly anomalies for: terrestrial water storage(TWS), precipitation (pre), actual evapotranspiration (aET), potential evapotranspiration (PET), runoff (Q), mean temperature (tavg) - derived metrics for TWS deficits --------------------------------- Filename: "res_TWS_deficit_mm.csv" Description: - derived characteristics of TWS deficit periods: including Start [date], Peak [Date], End [Date], max_deficit (peak) [mm], mean_deficit (intensity) [mm], Start_to_peak (development time) [months], peak to end (recovery time) [months], total_time [months] --------------------------------- Filename: "res_TWS_drivers_mm.csv" Description: - water fluxes during TWS deficit periods (ap: after peak, which means recovery time; bp: before peak, which means development time) - cumulative anomalies for pre, aET, Q, PET and mean for tavg --------------------------------- script repository for processing and production of figures: Description is in the scripts ---------------------------------