Global hydrological models continue to overestimate river discharge

Global hydrological models continue to overestimate river discharge

Abstract Global hydrological models (GHMs) are widely used to assess the impact of climate change on streamflow, floods, and hydrological droughts. For the ‘model evaluation and impact attribution’ part of the current round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a), model...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters Vol. 19; no. 7; pp. 074005 - 74017
Main Authors: Heinicke, Stefanie, Volkholz, Jan, Schewe, Jacob, Gosling, Simon N, Müller Schmied, Hannes, Zimmermann, Sandra, Mengel, Matthias, Sauer, Inga J, Burek, Peter, Chang, Jinfeng, Kou-Giesbrecht, Sian, Grillakis, Manoli, Guillaumot, Luca, Hanasaki, Naota, Koutroulis, Aristeidis, Otta, Kedar, Qi, Wei, Satoh, Yusuke, Stacke, Tobias, Yokohata, Tokuta, Frieler, Katja
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01-07-2024
Subjects:
Arid regions
Arid zones
Climate change
Drought
Earth Sciences
Environmental impact
flood
Humid areas
Hydrologic models
hydrological extremes
Hydrology
Low flow
model evaluation
model intercomparison
Performance enhancement
River discharge
River flow
river routing
Rivers
Sciences of the Universe
Simulation
Stream discharge
Stream flow
Variability
Water discharge
river routing
model evaluation
hydrological extremes
flood
model intercomparison
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Summary:Abstract Global hydrological models (GHMs) are widely used to assess the impact of climate change on streamflow, floods, and hydrological droughts. For the ‘model evaluation and impact attribution’ part of the current round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a), modelling teams generated historical simulations based on observed climate and direct human forcings with updated model versions. Here we provide a comprehensive evaluation of daily and maximum annual discharge based on ISIMIP3a simulations from nine GHMs by comparing the simulations to observational data from 644 river gauge stations. We also assess low flows and the effects of different river routing schemes. We find that models can reproduce variability in daily and maximum annual discharge, but tend to overestimate both quantities, as well as low flows. Models perform better at stations in wetter areas and at lower elevations. Discharge routed with the river routing model CaMa-Flood can improve the performance of some models, but for others, variability is overestimated, leading to reduced model performance. This study indicates that areas for future model development include improving the simulation of processes in arid regions and cold dynamics at high elevations. We further suggest that studies attributing observed changes in discharge to historical climate change using the current model ensemble will be most meaningful in humid areas, at low elevations, and in places with a regular seasonal discharge as these are the regions where the underlying dynamics seem to be best represented.
Bibliography:ERL-117362.R1
ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/ad52b0