Identification

Title

Effects of hydrologic model choice and calibration on the portrayal of climate change impacts

Abstract

The assessment of climate change impacts on water resources involves several methodological decisions, including choices of global climate models (GCMs), emission scenarios, downscaling techniques, and hydrologic modeling approaches. Among these, hydrologic model structure selection and parameter calibration are particularly relevant and usually have a strong subjective component. The goal of this research is to improve understanding of the role of these decisions on the assessment of the effects of climate change on hydrologic processes. The study is conducted in three basins located in the Colorado headwaters region, using four different hydrologic model structures [PRMS, VIC, Noah LSM, and Noah LSM with multiparameterization options (Noah-MP)]. To better understand the role of parameter estimation, model performance and projected hydrologic changes (i.e., changes in the hydrology obtained from hydrologic models due to climate change) are compared before and after calibration with the University of Arizona shuffled complex evolution (SCE-UA) algorithm. Hydrologic changes are examined via a climate change scenario where the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) change signal is used to perturb the boundary conditions of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model configured at 4-km resolution. Substantial intermodel differences (i.e., discrepancies between hydrologic models) in the portrayal of climate change impacts on water resources are demonstrated. Specifically, intermodel differences are larger than the mean signal from the CCSM-WRF climate scenario examined, even after the calibration process. Importantly, traditional single-objective calibration techniques aimed to reduce errors in runoff simulations do not necessarily improve intermodel agreement (i.e., same outputs from different hydrologic models) in projected changes of some hydrological processes such as evapotranspiration or snowpack.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d73j3f4w

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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date type

publication

effective date

2015-04-01T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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Use constraints

Copyright 2015 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact