Impact of evapotranspiration process representation on runoff projections from conceptual rainfall-runoff models

Abstract

Conceptual rainfall-runoff models are commonly used to estimate potential changes in runoff due to climate change. The development of these models has generally focused on reproducing runoff characteristics, with less scrutiny on other important processes such as the conversion from potential evapotranspiration (PET) to actual evapotranspiration (AET). This study uses three conceptual rainfall-runoff models (GR4J, AWBM, and IHACRES_CMD) and five catchments in climatologically different regions of Australia to explore the role of ET process representation on the sensitivity of runoff to plausible future changes in PET. The changes in PET were simulated using the Penman-Monteith model and by p..