Reliability of a conceptual hydrological model in a semi-arid Andean catchment facing water-use changes

International audienceThis paper explores the reliability of low-flow simulations by conceptual models in a semi-arid, Andean catchment (30 • S) facing climate variability and water-use changes. Depending on water availability, a significant part of surface water resources are diverted to meet irrigation requirements. In return, these water withdrawals are likely to influence the hydrological behavior of the catchment. The value of model-based analyses thus relies on our ability to adequately represent the complex interactions between climate variability , human-induced flow perturbations and crop water use. In this study, a parsimonious hydrological model (GR4J) including a snow routine was combined with a model of irrigation water-use (IWU) to provide a new, 6-parameter model of the catchment behavior (called GR4J/IWU). The original, 4-parameter GR4J model and the 6-parameter GR6J model were also used as benchmarks to evaluate the usefulness of explicitly accounting for water abstractions. Calibration and validation of these three models were performed successively over two different 5-year periods representing contrasted water-use and climate conditions. Overall, the GR4J/IWU model provided better simulations than the GR4J and GR6J models over both periods. Further research is required to quantify the predictive uncertainty associated with model structures, parameters and inputs

Assessing uncertainties in climate change impacts on runoff in Western Mediterranean basins

International audienceThis paper investigates the uncertainties linked to climate change impacts on runoff in four mesoscale basins (900 to 1800 km 2) in the Mediterranean region. Runoff simulations were based on a daily conceptual model including a snow module. The model was calibrated and validated according to a differential split-sample test over a 20-year period and four competing criterions aiming to represent model structural uncertainty based on the concept of Pareto optimality. Five regional climate models (RCMs) from the Med-CORDEX initiative were used to provide temperature and precipitation projections under RCP8.5 by 2050. The RCMs' inability to realistically simulate reference climate (notably precipitation) led us to apply a monthly perturbation method in order to produce a range of climate scenarios. The structural uncertainty bounds obtained from the hydrological simulations over the reference period showed that the model was able to correctly reproduce observed runoff despite contrasted hydrological conditions in (and in between) the basins. Climate projections were shown to be convergent regarding temperatures, which could increase by about +1 to 3 • C on each basin. In contrast, no clear trends in precipitation could be put in evidence, some RCMs leading to a mean annual precipitation decrease (up to 64 %), and others to an increase (up to 33 %). The hydrological projections resulted from the combination of the hydrological simulation bounds with the range of climate projections. Despite the propagation of those uncertainties, the 2050 hydrological scenarios agreed on a significant runoff decrease (2-77 %) during spring on all basins. On the opposite, no clear trend in runoff could be observed for the other seasons

Assessing the capacity to meet irrigation water needs for viticulture under climate variability in the Chilean Andes

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Reducing structural uncertainty in conceptual hydrological modelling in the semi-arid Andes

The use of lumped, conceptual models in hydrological impact studies requires placing more emphasis on the uncertainty arising from deficiencies and/or ambiguities in the model structure. This study provides an opportunity to combine a multiple-hypothesis framework with a multi-criteria assessment scheme to reduce structural uncertainty in the conceptual modelling of a mesoscale Andean catchment (1515 km(2)) over a 30-year period (1982-2011). The modelling process was decomposed into six model-building decisions related to the following aspects of the system behaviour: snow accumulation and melt, runoff generation, redistribution and delay of water fluxes, and natural storage effects. Each of these decisions was provided with a set of alternative modelling options, resulting in a total of 72 competing model structures. These structures were calibrated using the concept of Pareto optimality with three criteria pertaining to streamflow simulations and one to the seasonal dynamics of snow processes. The results were analyzed in the four-dimensional (4-D) space of performance measures using a fuzzy c-means clustering technique and a differential split sample test, leading to identify 14 equally acceptable model hypotheses. A filtering approach was then applied to these best-performing structures in order to minimize the overall uncertainty envelope while maximizing the number of enclosed observations. This led to retain eight model hypotheses as a representation of the minimum structural uncertainty that could be obtained with this modelling framework. Future work to better consider model predictive uncertainty should include a proper assessment of parameter equifinality and data errors, as well as the testing of new or refined hypotheses to allow for the use of additional auxiliary observations

Assessing the reliability of conceptual hydrological modelling in a cultivated, drought-prone catchment of the Chilean Andes.

In: Hydrologic non-stationarity and extrapolating models to predict the future.International audienc