On the representation of water reservoir storage and operations in large-scale hydrological models: implications on model parameterization and climate change impact assessments

Dang, Thanh Duc; Chowdhury, A. F. M. Kamal; Galelli, Stefano

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-397-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-397-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-397-2020

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

Articles | Volume 24, issue 1

Research article

|

24 Jan 2020

Research article |

| 24 Jan 2020

On the representation of water reservoir storage and operations in large-scale hydrological models: implications on model parameterization and climate change impact assessments

Thanh Duc Dang, A. F. M. Kamal Chowdhury, and Stefano Galelli

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-397-2020-supplement

Data sets

Asian Precipitation - Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE's Water Resources) Research Institute of Humanity and Nature (RIHN) and the Meteorological Research Institute of Japan Meteorological Agency (MRI/JMA) http://www.chikyu.ac.jp/precip/english/downloads.html

Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds093.1/#!

Global Land Cover Characterization (GLCC) The United States Geological Survey (USGS) https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/usgs-eros-archive-land-cover-products-global-land-cover-characterization-glcc?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

Harmonized World Soil Database v 1.2 Organization of the United Nations (FAO) http://www.fao.org/soils-portal/soil-survey/soil-maps-and-databases/ harmonized-world-soil-database-v12/en/

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (Terra MODIS) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Landsat TM and ETM+ https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

GTOPO30 DEM The United States Geological Survey (USGS) https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eros/science/usgs-eros-archive-digital-elevation-global-30-arc-second-elevation-gtopo30?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

Coupled Model Intercomparision Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/esgf-llnl/

Global Reservoir and Dam (GRandD) Database Socioeconomic Data and Application Center (SEDAC) http://globaldamwatch.org/data/#core_global

VIC-Res T. D. Dang https://github.com/thanhiwer/VICRes

Short summary

A common problem in catchment hydrology lies in the representation of dams in numerical models. Here, we contribute to the existing literature by showing that the representation of water reservoirs can largely impact the model parameters, a result attained by comparing the parameters of a model for the upper Mekong basin built with or without reservoirs. We show that a flawed parameter estimation affects the representation of key physical processes and the downstream applications of the model.