Comparison of generalized non-data-driven lake and reservoir routing models for global-scale hydrologic forecasting of reservoir outflow at diurnal time steps

Gutenson, Joseph L.; Tavakoly, Ahmad A.; Wahl, Mark D.; Follum, Michael L.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2711-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2711-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2711-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 5

Research article

|

27 May 2020

Research article |

| 27 May 2020

Comparison of generalized non-data-driven lake and reservoir routing models for global-scale hydrologic forecasting of reservoir outflow at diurnal time steps

Joseph L. Gutenson, Ahmad A. Tavakoly, Mark D. Wahl, and Michael L. Follum

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Final revised paper (published on 27 May 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 04 Jul 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee Report hess 2019-264', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Aug 2019
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer #1', Joseph Gutenson, 27 Sep 2019
RC2: 'Review hess-2019-264', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Aug 2019
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer #2', Joseph Gutenson, 27 Sep 2019
RC3: 'Review comment on manuscript "Comparison of Generalized Non-Data-Driven Reservoir Routing Models for Global-Scale Hydrologic Modeling"', Anonymous Referee #3, 07 Aug 2019
- AC3: 'Response to Reviewer #3', Joseph Gutenson, 27 Sep 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (08 Oct 2019) by Niko Wanders

AR by Lorena Grabowski on behalf of the Authors (03 Jan 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (23 Jan 2020) by Niko Wanders

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (08 Feb 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (24 Feb 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Gutenson et al., performs a comparison of two parsimonious non-data driven reservoirs operation models. The statistical comparison across the models and baseline is appropriate and in general the paper is well written and clearly structured. Compared to the previous version of the manuscript I believe that the authors have addressed most of the concerns raised by the reviewers, although I was not among them. Yet, I have some remaining concerns that I consider should be addressed before accepting the paper for publication.

1) I understand that the authors have qualitatively addressed the choice of the two models D03 and H06 in the introduction due to their parsimony, but I feel that the comparison remains weak as it is. I think the conclusions of the study would be even stronger if the authors included also less parsimonious models, e.g., the Burek et al., 2013 or Zhao et al., 2016 (if data allows to apply them at the daily time step). This has the dual added value to inform the GHM community on potential tradeoffs between model complexity and performance, and shows in which cases a more complex reservoir operation model might be more appropriate.

2) I think that a breakdown of the results (especially Figure 2 and 4) based on dam purpose would be very valuable. If most of the dams are multipurpose and include hydropower, then plotting the residuals against the dam’s installed capacity might give insights on the potential dependence of the model performance on hydropower potential operation (rather relevant at the daily time step).

3) The limitations section should address the sample bias and related implications. Might very well be that the D03 outperforms the H06 in temperate regions but everywhere else the H06 might be a better choice. For similar reasons I recommend to not implement solely the D03 in RAPID but also the H06 model to extend the performance testing in regions outside the US in future studies.

Minor remarks:
L. 163-164 abbreviations D03 and H06 are introduced but are already present in the text prior to this point. Should be corrected.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (03 Mar 2020) by Niko Wanders

AR by Joseph Gutenson on behalf of the Authors (14 Mar 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Apr 2020) by Niko Wanders

Post-review adjustments

AA: Author's adjustment | EA: Editor approval

AA by Joseph Gutenson on behalf of the Authors (12 May 2020) Author's adjustment Manuscript

EA: Adjustments approved (15 May 2020) by Niko Wanders

Short summary

Global-scale hydrologic forecasts should account for attenuation through lakes and reservoirs. There is no consensus on the best approach to estimating this attenuation in large-spatial-scale hydrologic forecasts. This article investigates two existing parsimonious approaches to estimating reservoir outflows. We test each method at 60 reservoirs in the United States. We find that a method first developed in 2003 can provide a reasonable approximation of diurnal reservoir outflows.