Articles | Volume 29, issue 11
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2361-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2361-2025
Technical note
 | 
04 Jun 2025
Technical note |  | 04 Jun 2025

Technical note: How many models do we need to simulate hydrologic processes across large geographical domains?

Wouter J. M. Knoben, Ashwin Raman, Gaby J. Gründemann, Mukesh Kumar, Alain Pietroniro, Chaopeng Shen, Yalan Song, Cyril Thébault, Katie van Werkhoven, Andrew W. Wood, and Martyn P. Clark

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Cited articles

Addor, N. and Melsen, L. A.: Legacy, Rather Than Adequacy, Drives the Selection of Hydrological Models, Water Resour. Res., 55, 378–390, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR022958, 2019. a
Addor, N., Newman, A. J., Mizukami, N., and Clark, M. P.: Catchment attributes for large-sample studies, NCAR [data set], https://doi.org/10.5065/D6G73C3Q, 2017a. a, b
Addor, N., Newman, A. J., Mizukami, N., and Clark, M. P.: The CAMELS data set: catchment attributes and meteorology for large-sample studies, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 21, 5293–5313, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-5293-2017, 2017b. a, b
Arheimer, B., Pimentel, R., Isberg, K., Crochemore, L., Andersson, J. C. M., Hasan, A., and Pineda, L.: Global catchment modelling using World-Wide HYPE (WWH), open data, and stepwise parameter estimation, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 535–559, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-535-2020, 2020. a
Bell, V., Carrington, D., and Moore, R.: Comparison of rainfall-runoff models for flood forecasting – part 2, Tech. rep., publication title: R&D Technical review W241, Environment Agency, ISBN 1 85705 397 4, 2001. a, b
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Short summary
Hydrologic models are needed to provide simulations of water availability, floods, and droughts. The accuracy of these simulations is often quantified with so-called performance scores. A common thought is that different models are more or less applicable to different landscapes, depending on how the model works. We show that performance scores are not helpful in distinguishing between different models and thus cannot easily be used to select an appropriate model for a specific place.
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