Using altimetry observations combined with GRACE to select parameter sets of a hydrological model in a data-scarce region

Hulsman, Petra; Winsemius, Hessel C.; Michailovsky, Claire I.; Savenije, Hubert H. G.; Hrachowitz, Markus

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-3331-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-3331-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-3331-2020

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

Articles | Volume 24, issue 6

Research article

|

30 Jun 2020

Research article |

| 30 Jun 2020

Using altimetry observations combined with GRACE to select parameter sets of a hydrological model in a data-scarce region

Petra Hulsman, Hessel C. Winsemius, Claire I. Michailovsky, Hubert H. G. Savenije, and Markus Hrachowitz

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Final revised paper (published on 30 Jun 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Sep 2019)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review Comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Oct 2019
- AC1: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #1', Petra Hulsman, 28 Nov 2019
RC2: 'Review of HESS 2019-346', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Oct 2019
- AC2: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #2', Petra Hulsman, 28 Nov 2019
RC3: 'Comments for hess-2019-346', Anonymous Referee #3, 15 Oct 2019
- AC3: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #3', Petra Hulsman, 28 Nov 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) (11 Dec 2019) by Daniel Viviroli

AR by Petra Hulsman on behalf of the Authors (15 Jan 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Jan 2020) by Daniel Viviroli

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (13 Feb 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (17 Feb 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I am quite disappointed by the revision of the paper. According to the comments by all 3 reviewers I was expecting more changes to the manuscript, in particular regarding the presentation of the scientific questions, the methodology and the discussion. Instead the authors seem to have adopted a “minimalist change” strategy.
In particular, the following points were not addressed properly:
- the authors do indeed give a few details on GRACE and discuss the uncertainties associated to GRACE products but a clear description of the GRACE product and how it was processed is still missing. The reader is still left to guess whether GRACE provides soil water storage in mm or storage variation in mm/time step? What are the “seasonal water storage anomalies” mentioned p 7 l 196 and p14 l 315?
- p3 l 100-111: GRACE is not mentioned in the definition of the objectives of the study. It appears suddenly at section 3.1. There is also no reference to GRACE in the last parts of the discussion (4.4-4.5). What is the added value of GRACE + altimetry data instead of only altimetry. Could this be tested and discussed?
- a clear Table with the list of model parameters was requested by the Reviewers but not provided. There are a Figure and Table in Supplementary Materials but no reference is made to them in the main text so they are useless. Besides, they are themselves quite confusing. The authors declare 17 to 25 calibration parameters (Table 4) but depending what Figure / Table the reader looks at, it shows between 9 and 27 parameters… In Table 3 there is also a list of parameters in the caption where I can count 11 parameters + a reference to Hydrological Response Units that comes out of nowhere.
- remarks were done on the presentation of the study methodology (section 3.3). Besides the addition of a synthesis Table (which is welcome), very little modifications were done to the text. As a result, the methodology section is still very long (longer than the results & discussion section) and confusing. For example, the model evaluation criteria are described along with the first calibration strategy in 3.3.1 although they were also used for the other strategies (but not all of them). I really think that this section should be reworked in depth to make things clearer.
- on this topic I’m still not convinced that is was necessary to use all these evaluation criteria to see differences between the strategies and draw conclusions. I’m not sure that each of these signatures does bring specific information that is not already covered by another one (see McMillan et al., 2017). Using less signatures/criteria would certainly make the paper more legible.
- the discussion lists the points raised by the reviewers but does not really discuss them. It should be expanded to discuss really the implications of these points for the conclusions of the study.

McMillan, H, Westerberg, I, Branger, F. Five guidelines for selecting hydrological signatures. Hydrological Processes. 2017; 31: 4757– 4761. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.11300

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (02 Mar 2020) by Daniel Viviroli

AR by Petra Hulsman on behalf of the Authors (10 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Apr 2020) by Daniel Viviroli

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 May 2020)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (27 May 2020) by Daniel Viviroli

AR by Petra Hulsman on behalf of the Authors (29 May 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

In the absence of discharge data in ungauged basins, remotely sensed river water level data, i.e. altimetry, may provide valuable information to calibrate hydrological models. This study illustrated that for large rivers in data-scarce regions, river altimetry data from multiple locations combined with GRACE data have the potential to fill this gap when combined with estimates of the river geometry, thereby allowing a step towards more reliable hydrological modelling in data-scarce regions.