Transferring global uncertainty estimates from gauged to ungauged catchments

Bourgin, F.; Andréassian, V.; Perrin, C.; Oudin, L.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-2535-2015

Articles | Volume 19, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-2535-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-2535-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 5

Research article

|

29 May 2015

Research article |

| 29 May 2015

Transferring global uncertainty estimates from gauged to ungauged catchments

F. Bourgin, V. Andréassian, C. Perrin, and L. Oudin

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Final revised paper (published on 29 May 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 14 Jul 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C2712: 'Review', Denis Hughes, 25 Jul 2014
- AC C4832: 'Author Comments', François Bourgin, 03 Nov 2014
RC C2899: 'Referee's comment', Alberto Viglione, 04 Aug 2014
- AC C4833: 'Author Comments', François Bourgin, 03 Nov 2014
RC C2981: 'Transferring model uncertainty estimates from gauged to ungauged catchments', Anonymous Referee #3, 08 Aug 2014
- AC C4834: 'Author Comments', François Bourgin, 03 Nov 2014
RC C3075: 'Review of “Transferring model uncertainty estimates from gauged to ungauged catchments”', Anonymous Referee #4, 13 Aug 2014
- AC C4835: 'Author Comments', François Bourgin, 03 Nov 2014
RC C3692: 'Referee's comments', Anonymous Referee #5, 08 Sep 2014
- AC C4836: 'Author Comments', François Bourgin, 03 Nov 2014

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (04 Nov 2014) by Ross Woods

AR by François Bourgin on behalf of the Authors (31 Jan 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (17 Feb 2015) by Ross Woods

RR by Alberto Viglione (01 Mar 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (09 Mar 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Re-review of “Transferring global uncertainty estimates from gauged to ungauged catchments”

I have had the opportunity to re-review the manuscript. While I believe that the revisions have helped to make the manuscript much easier to understand, there are still sections of the text that require additional editing to clarify the approaches. Therefore, I do not feel the publication can be accepted without these revisions.

1) Figure 1 is very helpful in understanding the proposed approach; however, additional editing is required. Some of the text in the green circles is not viewable. The ranges of flows for each flow group are not shown; the reader only sees that there are 10 groups. The ranges of flow for each group should be shown either in the figure or explained in the text. Step 3 should explain what the white dots represent in the plot - are these the uncertainty bounds? In step 4, more information is needed as to how do the flow groups get translated to the hydrogrpah?

2) The description of the method within the text is still quite unclear. As currently presented, there is not enough detail for the reader to repeat this experiment using only the information presented about this method. For example, there is still not enough information as to how the 10 groups were chosen other than “created 10 groups of relative errors according to the magnitude of the simulated flows.” The flow ranges for the 10 groups are not described so the reader has no way to apply this approach as described. Given that numerous reviewers had pointed out that additional justification is needed to define how the groups are chosen, the manuscript still has not adequately addressed this point. Further, in steps 3b and 4b, explain what is meant by a multiplicative coefficient and how exactly it is used in this process.

3) The Q5 and Q95 notation needs clarification. On pg. 11, sentence 1, Q5 and Q95 are used to describe the width of the interval; then Q95 and Q5 are described as being the 5th and 95th percentiles of the flow duration curve. Which is meant here? This needs clarification. This confusion is also in the conclusions section, which states (on top of p. 17), “We evaluated the approach over a large set of 907 catchments by assessing three expected quantiles of uncertainty estimates…” Are the Q5 and Q95 being referenced here or are there other quantiles that were used?

4) Section 5.3 is not adequate to justify the use of 10 flow groups. There are differences between the use of 10 and 1 group in figure 6 but not a dramatic one; therefore, perhaps it is also useful to try a few other groups (n=3,5,7) as well. Again, in practice, one would not be able to know how to apply this method from only these results.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (09 Mar 2015) by Ross Woods

AR by François Bourgin on behalf of the Authors (28 Mar 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (20 Apr 2015) by Ross Woods

AR by François Bourgin on behalf of the Authors (20 Apr 2015)