scholarly journals Comparing model performance of two rainfall-runoff models in the Rhine basin using different atmospheric forcing data sets

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 4325-4360 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. te Linde ◽  
J. C. J. H. Aerts ◽  
R. T. W. L. Hurkmans ◽  
M. Eberle
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Change Scenario ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Meteorological Forcing ◽  
Lumped Model ◽  
Distributed Models ◽  
Rhine Basin ◽  
Physically Based

Abstract. Due to the growing wish and necessity to simulate the possible effects of climate change on the discharge regime on large rivers such as the Rhine in Europe, there is a need for well performing hydrological models that can be applied in climate change scenario studies. There exists large variety in available models and there is an ongoing debate in research on rainfall-runoff modelling on whether or not physically based distributed models better represent observed discharges than conceptual lumped model approaches do. In this paper, the hydrological models HBV and VIC were compared for the Rhine basin by testing their performance in simulating discharge. Overall, the semi-distributed conceptual HBV model performed much better than the distributed physically based VIC model (E=0.62, r2=0.65 vs. E=0.31, r2=0.54 at Lobith). It is argued here that even for a well-documented river basin such as the Rhine, more complex modelling does not automatically lead to better results. Moreover, it is concluded that meteorological forcing data has a considerable influence on model performance, irrespectively to the type of model structure and the need for ground-based meteorological measurements is emphasized.

scholarly journals Comparing model performance of two rainfall-runoff models in the Rhine basin using different atmospheric forcing data sets

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 943-957 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. te Linde ◽  
J. C. J. H. Aerts ◽  
R. T. W. L. Hurkmans ◽  
M. Eberle
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Land Surface Model ◽  
Change Scenario ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Lumped Model ◽  
Rhine Basin

Abstract. Due to the growing wish and necessity to simulate the possible effects of climate change on the discharge regime on large rivers such as the Rhine in Europe, there is a need for well performing hydrological models that can be applied in climate change scenario studies. There exists large variety in available models and there is an ongoing debate in research on rainfall-runoff modelling on whether or not physically based distributed models better represent observed discharges than conceptual lumped model approaches do. In addition, it is argued that Land Surface Models (LSMs) carry the potential to accurately estimate hydrological partitioning, because they solve the coupled water and energy balance. In this paper, the hydrological models HBV and VIC were compared for the Rhine basin by testing their performance in simulating discharge. Overall, the semi-distributed conceptual HBV model performed much better than the distributed land surface model VIC (E=0.62, r2=0.65 vs. E=0.31, r2=0.54 at Lobith). It is argued here that even for a well-documented river basin such as the Rhine, more complex modelling does not automatically lead to better results. Moreover, it is concluded that meteorological forcing data has a considerable influence on model performance, irrespectively to the type of model structure and the need for ground-based meteorological measurements is emphasized.

Usage of Differential Evolution Algorithm in the Calibration of Parametric Rainfall-Runoff Modeling

2018 ◽  
pp. 481-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Umut Okkan ◽  
Nuray Gedik ◽  
Halil Uysal
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Optimization ◽  
Differential Evolution ◽  
Hydrological Model ◽  
Optimization Algorithms ◽  
Differential Evolution Algorithm ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Lumped Model ◽  
Evolution Algorithm

In recent years, global optimization algorithms are used in many engineering applications. Calibration of certain parameters at conceptualization of hydrological models is one example of these. An important issue in interpreting the effects of climate change on the basin depends on selecting an appropriate hydrological model. Not only climate change impact assessment studies, but also many water resources planning studies refer to such modeling applications. In order to obtain reliable results from these hydrological models, calibration phase of the models needs to be done well. Hence, global optimization methods are utilized in the calibration process. In this chapter, the differential evolution algorithm (DEA), which has rare application in the hydrological modeling literature, was explained. As an application, the use of the DEA algorithm in the hydrological model calibration phase was mentioned. DYNWBM, a lumped model with five parameters, was selected as the hydrological model. The calibration and then validation period performances of the DEA based DYNWBM model were tested and also compared with other global optimization algorithms. According to the results derived from the study, hydrological model appropriately reflects the rainfall-runoff relation of basin for both periods.

scholarly journals Rainfall-runoff modelling in a catchment with a complex groundwater flow system: application of the Representative Elementary Watershed (REW) approach

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 639-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. P. Zhang ◽  
H. H. G. Savenije
Keyword(s):  
River Basin ◽  
Overland Flow ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Source Area ◽  
Subsurface Water ◽  
Watershed Hydrology ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Physically Based ◽  
Infiltration Excess

Abstract. Based on the Representative Elementary Watershed (REW) approach, the modelling tool REWASH (Representative Elementary WAterShed Hydrology) has been developed and applied to the Geer river basin. REWASH is deterministic, semi-distributed, physically based and can be directly applied to the watershed scale. In applying REWASH, the river basin is divided into a number of sub-watersheds, so called REWs, according to the Strahler order of the river network. REWASH describes the dominant hydrological processes, i.e. subsurface flow in the unsaturated and saturated domains, and overland flow by the saturation-excess and infiltration-excess mechanisms. Through flux exchanges among the different spatial domains of the REW, surface and subsurface water interactions are fully coupled. REWASH is a parsimonious tool for modelling watershed hydrological response. However, it can be modified to include more components to simulate specific processes when applied to a specific river basin where such processes are observed or considered to be dominant. In this study, we have added a new component to simulate interception using a simple parametric approach. Interception plays an important role in the water balance of a watershed although it is often disregarded. In addition, a refinement for the transpiration in the unsaturated zone has been made. Finally, an improved approach for simulating saturation overland flow by relating the variable source area to both the topography and the groundwater level is presented. The model has been calibrated and verified using a 4-year data set, which has been split into two for calibration and validation. The model performance has been assessed by multi-criteria evaluation. This work is the first full application of the REW approach to watershed rainfall-runoff modelling in a real watershed. The results demonstrate that the REW approach provides an alternative blueprint for physically based hydrological modelling.

scholarly journals Estimating the Relative Uncertainties Sourced from GCMs and Hydrological Models in Modeling Climate Change Impact on Runoff

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Teng ◽  
Jai Vaze ◽  
Francis H. S. Chiew ◽  
Biao Wang ◽  
Jean-Michel Perraud
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Impact ◽  
Daily Rainfall ◽  
Low Flow ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Runoff Modeling ◽  
Change Impact ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Climate Series

Abstract This paper assesses the relative uncertainties from GCMs and from hydrological models in modeling climate change impact on runoff across southeast Australia. Five lumped conceptual daily rainfall–runoff models are used to model runoff using historical daily climate series and using future climate series obtained by empirically scaling the historical climate series informed by simulations from 15 GCMs. The majority of the GCMs project a drier future for this region, particularly in the southern parts, and this is amplified as a bigger reduction in the runoff. The results indicate that the uncertainty sourced from the GCMs is much larger than the uncertainty in the rainfall–runoff models. The variability in the climate change impact on runoff results for one rainfall–runoff model informed by 15 GCMs (an about 28%–35% difference between the minimum and maximum results for mean annual, mean seasonal, and high runoff) is considerably larger than the variability in the results between the five rainfall–runoff models informed by 1 GCM (a less than 7% difference between the minimum and maximum results). The difference between the rainfall–runoff modeling results is larger in the drier regions for scenarios of big declines in future rainfall and in the low-flow characteristics. The rainfall–runoff modeling here considers only the runoff sensitivity to changes in the input climate data (primarily daily rainfall), and the difference between the hydrological modeling results is likely to be greater if potential changes in the climate–runoff relationship in a warmer and higher CO2 environment are modeled.

scholarly journals Study on the effect of rainfall spatial variability on runoff modelling

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Zhang ◽  
Dawei Han ◽  
Yang Song ◽  
Qiang Dai
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Spatial Variability ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Moran’S I ◽  
Image Size ◽  
Moran's I ◽  
Rainfall Events ◽  
Lumped Model ◽  
Distributed Models

Abstract Rainfall spatial variability was assessed to explore its influence on runoff modelling. Image size, coefficient of variation (Cv) and Moran's I were chosen to assess for rainfall spatial variability. The smaller the image size after compression, the less complex is the rainfall spatial variability. The results showed that due to the drawing procedure and varied compression methods, a large uncertainty exists for using image size to describe rainfall spatial variability. Cv quantifies the variability between different rainfall values without considering rainfall spatial distribution and Moran's I describes the spatial autocorrelation between gauges rather than the values. As both rainfall values and spatial distribution have an influence on runoff modelling, the combination of Cv and Moran's I was further explored. The results showed that the combination of Cv and Moran's I is reliable to describe rainfall spatial variability. Furthermore, with the increase of rainfall spatial variability, the hydrological model performance decreases. Moreover, it is difficult for a lumped model to cope with rainfall events assigned with complex rainfall spatial variability since spatial information is not taken into consideration (i.e. the VIC model used in this study). Therefore, it is recommended to apply distributed models that can deal with more spatial input information.

scholarly journals Are we using the right fuel to drive hydrological models? A climate impact study in the Upper Blue Nile

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 2163-2185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Liersch ◽  
Julia Tecklenburg ◽  
Henning Rust ◽  
Andreas Dobler ◽  
Madlen Fischer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Bias Correction ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Climate Impact ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Blue Nile ◽  
Projected Change ◽  
Model Ensembles

Abstract. Climate simulations are the fuel to drive hydrological models that are used to assess the impacts of climate change and variability on hydrological parameters, such as river discharges, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration. Unlike with cars, where we know which fuel the engine requires, we never know in advance what unexpected side effects might be caused by the fuel we feed our models with. Sometimes we increase the fuel's octane number (bias correction) to achieve better performance and find out that the model behaves differently but not always as was expected or desired. This study investigates the impacts of projected climate change on the hydrology of the Upper Blue Nile catchment using two model ensembles consisting of five global CMIP5 Earth system models and 10 regional climate models (CORDEX Africa). WATCH forcing data were used to calibrate an eco-hydrological model and to bias-correct both model ensembles using slightly differing approaches. On the one hand it was found that the bias correction methods considerably improved the performance of average rainfall characteristics in the reference period (1970–1999) in most of the cases. This also holds true for non-extreme discharge conditions between Q20 and Q80. On the other hand, bias-corrected simulations tend to overemphasize magnitudes of projected change signals and extremes. A general weakness of both uncorrected and bias-corrected simulations is the rather poor representation of high and low flows and their extremes, which were often deteriorated by bias correction. This inaccuracy is a crucial deficiency for regional impact studies dealing with water management issues and it is therefore important to analyse model performance and characteristics and the effect of bias correction, and eventually to exclude some climate models from the ensemble. However, the multi-model means of all ensembles project increasing average annual discharges in the Upper Blue Nile catchment and a shift in seasonal patterns, with decreasing discharges in June and July and increasing discharges from August to November.

scholarly journals Flood frequency estimation by continuous simulation under climate change (with uncertainty)

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Cameron ◽  
K. Beven ◽  
P. Naden
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Frequency Estimation ◽  
Flood Frequency ◽  
Change Scenario ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Catchment Scale ◽  
Continuous Simulation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Rainfall Model ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Abstract. This paper explores the potential for assessing the impacts of climate change upon flood frequency for the gauged, upland Wye catchment at Plynlimon, Wales, UK, while taking account of uncertainty in modelling rainfall-runoff processes under current conditions. A continuous simulation methodology which uses a stochastic rainfall model to drive the rainfall-runoff model TOPMODEL is utilised. Behavioural parameter sets for both the rainfall model and TOPMODEL are identified prior to the climate change runs using the Generalised Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) methodology. The "medium-high" UKCIP98 climate change scenario, obtained from the HadCM2 GCM simulations, is used as a starting point for a variety of different scenarios at the catchment scale. It is demonstrated that while the scenarios have only a small impact upon the likelihood weighted flood frequency uncertainty bounds in comparison with the current condition scenario, the risk of a given discharge as an element in the distribution of T year floods is changed. This underlines the need to account explicitly for uncertainty within hydrological modelling, especially in estimating the impacts of climate change. Keywords: Climate change; Floods; Frequency; TOPMODEL

scholarly journals Future Runoff Analysis in the Mekong River Basin under a Climate Change Scenario Using Deep Learning

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daeeop Lee ◽  
Giha Lee ◽  
Seongwon Kim ◽  
Sungho Jung
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Climate Change Scenario ◽  
Swat Model ◽  
Mekong River ◽  
Change Scenario ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Runoff Prediction ◽  
Runoff Analysis

In establishing adequate climate change policies regarding water resource development and management, the most essential step is performing a rainfall-runoff analysis. To this end, although several physical models have been developed and tested in many studies, they require a complex grid-based parameterization that uses climate, topography, land-use, and geology data to simulate spatiotemporal runoff. Furthermore, physical rainfall-runoff models also suffer from uncertainty originating from insufficient data quality and quantity, unreliable parameters, and imperfect model structures. As an alternative, this study proposes a rainfall-runoff analysis system for the Kratie station on the Mekong River mainstream using the long short-term memory (LSTM) model, a data-based black-box method. Future runoff variations were simulated by applying a climate change scenario. To assess the applicability of the LSTM model, its result was compared with a runoff analysis using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. The following steps (dataset periods in parentheses) were carried out within the SWAT approach: parameter correction (2000–2005), verification (2006–2007), and prediction (2008–2100), while the LSTM model went through the process of training (1980–2005), verification (2006–2007), and prediction (2008–2100). Globally available data were fed into the algorithms, with the exception of the observed discharge and temperature data, which could not be acquired. The bias-corrected Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5 climate change scenarios were used to predict future runoff. When the reproducibility at the Kratie station for the verification period of the two models (2006–2007) was evaluated, the SWAT model showed a Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) value of 0.84, while the LSTM model showed a higher accuracy, NSE = 0.99. The trend analysis result of the runoff prediction for the Kratie station over the 2008–2100 period did not show a statistically significant trend for neither scenario nor model. However, both models found that the annual mean flow rate in the RCP 8.5 scenario showed greater variability than in the RCP 4.5 scenario. These findings confirm that the LSTM runoff prediction presents a higher reproducibility than that of the SWAT model in simulating runoff variation according to time-series changes. Therefore, the LSTM model, which derives relatively accurate results with a small amount of data, is an effective approach to large-scale hydrologic modeling when only runoff time-series are available.

An experimental approach to reduce the parametric dimensionality for rainfall–runoff models

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Chen ◽  
Richard Arsenault ◽  
François P. Brissette
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Optimal Number ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Hydrological Models ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Efficiency Criterion ◽  
Performance Loss ◽  
The Past ◽  
Multi Objective Genetic Algorithm

Sobol’ sensitivity analysis has been used successfully in the past to reduce the parametric dimensionality for hydrological models. However, the effects of its limitation, in that it assumes an independence of parameters, need to be investigated. This study proposes an experimental approach to assess the commonly used Sobol’ analysis for reducing the parameter dimensionality of hydrological models. In this approach, the number of model parameters is directly pitted against an efficiency criterion within a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA), thus allowing both the identification of key model parameters and the optimal number of parameters to be used within the same analysis. The proposed approach was tested and compared with the Sobol’ method based on a conceptual lumped hydrological model (HSAMI) with 23 free parameters. The results show that both methods performed very similarly, and allowed 11 out of 23 HSAMI parameters to be reduced with little loss in model performance. Based on this comparison, Sobol’ appears to be an effective and robust method despite its limitations. On the other hand, the MOGA algorithm outperformed Sobol’ analysis for further reduction of the parametric space and found optimal solutions with as few as eight parameters with minimal performance loss in validation.

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