Journal article
Simulating Runoff Under Changing Climatic Conditions: A Framework for Model Improvement
K Fowler, Gemma Coxon, Jim Freer, Murray Peel, Thorsten Wagener, Andrew Western, Ross Woods, Lu Zhang
Water Resources Research | American Geophysical Union | Published : 2018
DOI: 10.1029/2018WR023989
Abstract
Rainfall-runoff models are often deficient under changing climatic conditions, yet almost no recent studies propose new or improved model structures, instead focusing on model intercomparison, input sensitivity, and/or quantification of uncertainty. This paucity of progress in model development is (in part) due to the difficulty of distinguishing which cases of model failure are truly caused by structural inadequacy. Here we propose a new framework to diagnose the salient cause of poor model performance in changing climate conditions, be it structural inadequacy, poor parameterization, or data errors. The framework can be applied to a single catchment, although larger samples of catchments a..
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Awarded by University of Bristol
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Australian Government in carrying out this work. Specifically, Keirnan Fowler's work was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award, and Murray Peel is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT120100130). Authors from the University of Bristol acknowledge the support of the UK's Natural Environment Research Council grant MaRIUS: Managing the Risks, Impacts and Uncertainties of droughts and water Scarcity (NE/L010399/1). Streamflow data used in this project were from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's (BOM) Hydrologic Reference Station project website (Turner, 2012), www.bom.gov.au/water/hrs.Rainfall data were from the Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) project (Jones et al., 2009), www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/.Potential evapotranspiration data were from the SILO project (Jeffrey et al., 2001), www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/silo/.Information on historical bushfires was made available by the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, Western Australia. MODIS-based AET estimates based on Guerschman et al. (2009) were made available by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. We thank Shervan Gharari, Luis Samaniego, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this work.