TY - JOUR
T1 - Inference of Parameters for a Global Hydrological Model
T2 - Identifiability and Predictive Uncertainties of Climate-Based Parameters
AU - Yoshida, T.
AU - Hanasaki, N.
AU - Nishina, K.
AU - Boulange, J.
AU - Okada, M.
AU - Troch, P. A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022. The Authors.
PY - 2022/2
Y1 - 2022/2
N2 - Calibration of global hydrological models (GHMs) has been attempted for over two decades; however, an effective and generic calibration method has not been explored. We present a novel framework for calibrating GHMs assuming that parameters can be regionalized by climate similarities. We calibrated four sensitive parameters of the H08 global hydrological model by aggregating the results of 5,000 simulations with randomly generated parameters into 11 Köppen climate classes and using an objective function Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) with random sampling from the proposed parameter distribution. From a 100-fold split-sampling test, we found that both the representativeness and robustness of the transferred parameter sets were guaranteed when the upper 5% of the samples were accepted and assign the median of each accepted parameter distribution for the climate class. The simulation with the climate-based parameters yielded satisfactory (NSE > 0.0) and good (NSE > 0.5) performances at 480 and 234 stations (61.7% and 30.1% of 777 stations), respectively. The storage capacity (SD) and the conductive coefficient (CD) were sensitive to the climate classes and exhibited well-constrained distributions of the accepted samples, whereas the recession parameters for the subsurface storage (γ and τ) showed little or no explanatory power to climate. The identified parameters for climate classes exhibited consistency with the physical interpretation of soil formation and efficiencies in vapor transfer. The consistency of the identified parameter values with physical underpinnings indicates that the appropriate parameters were determined, which ensured the robustness of parameters, especially when they are transferred to ungauged watersheds.
AB - Calibration of global hydrological models (GHMs) has been attempted for over two decades; however, an effective and generic calibration method has not been explored. We present a novel framework for calibrating GHMs assuming that parameters can be regionalized by climate similarities. We calibrated four sensitive parameters of the H08 global hydrological model by aggregating the results of 5,000 simulations with randomly generated parameters into 11 Köppen climate classes and using an objective function Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) with random sampling from the proposed parameter distribution. From a 100-fold split-sampling test, we found that both the representativeness and robustness of the transferred parameter sets were guaranteed when the upper 5% of the samples were accepted and assign the median of each accepted parameter distribution for the climate class. The simulation with the climate-based parameters yielded satisfactory (NSE > 0.0) and good (NSE > 0.5) performances at 480 and 234 stations (61.7% and 30.1% of 777 stations), respectively. The storage capacity (SD) and the conductive coefficient (CD) were sensitive to the climate classes and exhibited well-constrained distributions of the accepted samples, whereas the recession parameters for the subsurface storage (γ and τ) showed little or no explanatory power to climate. The identified parameters for climate classes exhibited consistency with the physical interpretation of soil formation and efficiencies in vapor transfer. The consistency of the identified parameter values with physical underpinnings indicates that the appropriate parameters were determined, which ensured the robustness of parameters, especially when they are transferred to ungauged watersheds.
KW - calibration
KW - global hydrological model
KW - ungauged watersheds
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U2 - 10.1029/2021WR030660
DO - 10.1029/2021WR030660
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85125146016
SN - 0043-1397
VL - 58
JO - Water Resources Research
JF - Water Resources Research
IS - 2
M1 - e2021WR030660
ER -