Articles | Volume 27, issue 12
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-2357-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-27-2357-2023
Research article
 | 
30 Jun 2023
Research article |  | 30 Jun 2023

The suitability of differentiable, physics-informed machine learning hydrologic models for ungauged regions and climate change impact assessment

Dapeng Feng, Hylke Beck, Kathryn Lawson, and Chaopeng Shen

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Cited articles

Addor, N., Newman, A. J., Mizukami, N., and Clark, M. P.: Catchment attributes for large-sample studies, UCAR/NCAR[data set], https://doi.org/10.5065/D6G73C3Q, 2017. 
Aghakouchak, A. and Habib, E.: Application of a Conceptual Hydrologic Model in Teaching Hydrologic Processes, Int. J. Eng. Educ., 26, 963–973, 2010. 
Baker, N., Alexander, F., Bremer, T., Hagberg, A., Kevrekidis, Y., Najm, H., Parashar, M., Patra, A., Sethian, J., Wild, S., Willcox, K., and Lee, S.: Workshop report on basic research needs for scientific machine learning: Core technologies for artificial intelligence, USDOE Office of Science (SC), Washington, D.C., USA, https://doi.org/10.2172/1478744, 2019. 
Baydin, A. G., Pearlmutter, B. A., Radul, A. A., and Siskind, J. M.: Automatic differentiation in machine learning: A survey, J. Mach. Learn. Res., 18, 1–43, 2018. 
Beck, H. E., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., de Roo, A., Miralles, D. G., McVicar, T. R., Schellekens, J., and Bruijnzeel, L. A.: Global-scale regionalization of hydrologic model parameters, Water Resour. Res., 52, 3599–3622, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015WR018247, 2016. 
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Short summary
Powerful hybrid models (called δ or delta models) embrace the fundamental learning capability of AI and can also explain the physical processes. Here we test their performance when applied to regions not in the training data. δ models rivaled the accuracy of state-of-the-art AI models under the data-dense scenario and even surpassed them for the data-sparse one. They generalize well due to the physical structure included. δ models could be ideal candidates for global hydrologic assessment.
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