Behind the scenes of streamflow model performance

Bouaziz, Laurène J. E.; Fenicia, Fabrizio; Thirel, Guillaume; de Boer-Euser, Tanja; Buitink, Joost; Brauer, Claudia C.; De Niel, Jan; Dewals, Benjamin J.; Drogue, Gilles; Grelier, Benjamin; Melsen, Lieke A.; Moustakas, Sotirios; Nossent, Jiri; Pereira, Fernando; Sprokkereef, Eric; Stam, Jasper; Weerts, Albrecht H.; Willems, Patrick; Savenije, Hubert H. G.; Hrachowitz, Markus

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-1069-2021

Articles | Volume 25, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-1069-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-1069-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 2

Research article

|

02 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 02 Mar 2021

Behind the scenes of streamflow model performance

Laurène J. E. Bouaziz, Fabrizio Fenicia, Guillaume Thirel, Tanja de Boer-Euser, Joost Buitink, Claudia C. Brauer, Jan De Niel, Benjamin J. Dewals, Gilles Drogue, Benjamin Grelier, Lieke A. Melsen, Sotirios Moustakas, Jiri Nossent, Fernando Pereira, Eric Sprokkereef, Jasper Stam, Albrecht H. Weerts, Patrick Willems, Hubert H. G. Savenije, and Markus Hrachowitz

Download

Final revised paper (published on 02 Mar 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 28 Apr 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer comments', Keith Beven, 30 Apr 2020
- AC1: 'Reply to Prof. Keith Beven', Laurène Bouaziz, 02 Jun 2020
SC1: 'A short comment on Bouaziz et al., 2020 and a question from Prof. Beven', Shervan Gharari, 12 May 2020
- AC3: 'Reply to Shervan Gharari', Laurène Bouaziz, 30 Jun 2020
RC2: 'review', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Jun 2020
- AC2: 'Reply to Anonymous referee 2', Laurène Bouaziz, 16 Jun 2020
RC3: 'Interesting approach but further data and analyses needed', Anonymous Referee #3, 01 Jul 2020
- AC4: 'Reply to Anonymous referee 3', Laurène Bouaziz, 17 Jul 2020
AC4: 'Reply to Anonymous referee 3', Laurène Bouaziz, 17 Jul 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (23 Jul 2020) by Nadav Peleg

AR by Laurène Bouaziz on behalf of the Authors (02 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Oct 2020) by Nadav Peleg

RR by Uwe Ehret (16 Oct 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #5 (30 Oct 2020)

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (05 Nov 2020) by Nadav Peleg

AR by Laurène Bouaziz on behalf of the Authors (17 Nov 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (17 Nov 2020) by Nadav Peleg

RR by Anonymous Referee #5 (16 Dec 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review for “Behind the scenes of streamflow model performance“ by Bouaziz et al.:
I thank the authors for their detailed responses to the comments. While most of the minor comments have been considered in the revised version of the manuscript, I unfortunately had to realize that the major comments were mostly addressed by means of a response to the reviewer. I do respect the decision of the authors to not address them more explicitly in their manuscript although it leaves the impression of a slightly minimalistic review round. Below I mention again three minor suggestions that I strongly recommend to incorporate into the manuscript. Apart from this critique, I would like to mention that I enjoyed reading the manuscript - it presents an interesting study that makes an important contribution to the hydrological modelling community.
Kind regards and happy holidays!

Minor comments:
1. You mention in your response that 20 acceptable parameter sets were retained after calibration for the multi-variable evaluation of the model. I couldn’t find this number anywhere in the manuscript. Please add it somewhere in the calibration section as it is quite an important difference whether one uses e.g. 1, 10, 50, or 100 accepted parameter sets.
2. It was not clear to me from reading the manuscript why results are often presented for only one of the three catchments. I think it is important that you explain the reader your reasons for presenting the results for a particular catchment. One sentence at the end of the models and protocols section should suffice for that.
3. You provided a quite detailed response to the hydroclimatic similarity/difference of the calibration and validation period. I think it is important to include this response in the manuscript as the similarity of the two periods helps to make an even stronger point on the need for a multi-variable model evaluation.

Hide

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (17 Dec 2020) by Nadav Peleg

AR by Laurène Bouaziz on behalf of the Authors (24 Dec 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (02 Jan 2021) by Nadav Peleg

AR by Laurène Bouaziz on behalf of the Authors (07 Jan 2021) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

We quantify the differences in internal states and fluxes of 12 process-based models with similar streamflow performance and assess their plausibility using remotely sensed estimates of evaporation, snow cover, soil moisture and total storage anomalies. The dissimilarities in internal process representation imply that these models cannot all simultaneously be close to reality. Therefore, we invite modelers to evaluate their models using multiple variables and to rely on multi-model studies.