Full text

Turn on search term navigation

© 2021. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Recent advancements in computational efficiency and Earth system modeling have awarded hydrologists with increasingly high-resolution models of terrestrial hydrology, which are paramount to understanding and predicting complex fluxes of moisture and energy. Continental-scale hydrologic simulations are, in particular, of interest to the hydrologic community for numerous societal, scientific, and operational benefits. The coupled hydrology–land surface model ParFlow–CLM configured over the continental United States (PFCONUS) has been employed in previous literature to study scale-dependent connections between water table depth, topography, recharge, and evapotranspiration, as well as to explore impacts of anthropogenic aquifer depletion to the water and energy balance. These studies have allowed for an unprecedented process-based understanding of the continental water cycle at high resolution. Here, we provide the most comprehensive evaluation of PFCONUS version 1.0 (PFCONUSv1) performance to date by comparing numerous modeled water balance components with thousands of in situ observations and several remote sensing products and using a range of statistical performance metrics for evaluation. PFCONUSv1 comparisons with these datasets are a promising indicator of model fidelity and ability to reproduce the continental-scale water balance at high resolution. Areas for improvement are identified, such as a positive streamflow bias at gauges in the eastern Great Plains, a shallow water table bias over many areas of the model domain, and low bias in seasonal total water storage amplitude, especially for the Ohio, Missouri, and Arkansas River basins. We discuss several potential sources for model bias and suggest that minimizing error in topographic processing and meteorological forcing would considerably improve model performance. Results here provide a benchmark and guidance for further PFCONUS model development, and they highlight the importance of concurrently evaluating all hydrologic components and fluxes to provide a multivariate, holistic validation of the complete modeled water balance.

Details

Title
Assessment of the ParFlow–CLM CONUS 1.0 integrated hydrologic model: evaluation of hyper-resolution water balance components across the contiguous United States
Author
O'Neill, Mary M F 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Tijerina, Danielle T 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Condon, Laura E 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Maxwell, Reed M 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, USA; now at: Hydrological Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA; now at: Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, Greenbelt, MD, USA 
 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA 
 Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ, USA 
Pages
7223-7254
Publication year
2021
Publication date
2021
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
ISSN
1991962X
e-ISSN
19919603
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2604290786
Copyright
© 2021. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.