Articles | Volume 29, issue 18
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-4607-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.A novel method for correcting water budget components and reducing their uncertainties by optimally distributing the imbalance residual without full closure
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- Final revised paper (published on 24 Sep 2025)
- Preprint (discussion started on 22 Apr 2025)
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor
| : Report abuse
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-990', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 May 2025
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Hanjia Fu, 31 May 2025
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RC2: 'Reply on AC1', Anonymous Referee #1, 31 May 2025
- AC4: 'Reply on RC2', Hanjia Fu, 05 Jun 2025
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RC2: 'Reply on AC1', Anonymous Referee #1, 31 May 2025
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Hanjia Fu, 31 May 2025
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CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-990', Chenglin Bi, 19 May 2025
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AC2: 'Reply on CC1', Hanjia Fu, 31 May 2025
- CC2: 'Reply on AC2', Cheng Bi, 31 May 2025
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AC2: 'Reply on CC1', Hanjia Fu, 31 May 2025
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RC3: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-990', Anonymous Referee #2, 31 May 2025
- AC3: 'Reply on RC3', Hanjia Fu, 05 Jun 2025
Peer review completion
AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload
ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (21 Jun 2025) by Yue-Ping Xu

AR by Hanjia Fu on behalf of the Authors (27 Jun 2025)
Author's response
Author's tracked changes
Manuscript
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (12 Jul 2025) by Yue-Ping Xu
RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (14 Jul 2025)
ED: Publish as is (07 Aug 2025) by Yue-Ping Xu

AR by Hanjia Fu on behalf of the Authors (09 Aug 2025)
Manuscript
The manuscript is focused on numerical techniques to 'distribute' residuals of a water balance equation over the contributing terms, avoiding negative values. The manuscript seems focused on the numerical techniques, with limited efforts for a hydrological interpretation. It could be more convincing if authors bring a bit more on the 'explanation' side.
It is not immediately evident to this reviewer that negative values are a problem, especially for the soil storage term (TWSC). In fact one may expect this term to be symmetric around zero, and maybe the same holds for the errors?
One would assume, based on considerations of the various terms of the water balance that a comparison between the negative (or positive) residuals over time will help identifying which term may be primarily responsible: the soil term can dominate in the short term (e.g. days), but will be small for annual comparisons and may become negligible at decadal scale (except for the long-term desiccation discourse). Spatial patterns are also expected, as frontal rainfall patterns are much easier to represent correctly than thunderstorms (much of tropics and arid zone rainfall) -- indeed your later results (Fig. 6) seem to match this expectation.
Maybe further reference can be made to the 'Budyko' literature that looks at an annual balance, while your current analysis takes a monthly perspective.
The abstract could become more attractive to readers if the time unit (monthly balance calculations) is made explicit, as results for daily or annual balance calculations will likely be different.
Details:
The Highlights should be understandable for a non-technical expert -- at the moment they are too full of jargon to attract readers.
Line 57 Indeed a closed budget gives some confidence in the underlying estimates, but not if the closure is obtained by 'fudging' the data, without 'understanding'. So I disagree that 'closing the budget' helps with 'understanding'.
Line 66. Before delving into the details it will be good for the reader to be reminded of the physical aspects of uncertainty in the various terms, as these are of different natures:
P precipitation input -- the typically are fairly reliable point data from rainfall gauge data, often with some need t gap fill missing data. The main uncertainty here is in the spatial distribution and representativeness of rainfall gauges, in relation to rainfall types (for frontal rains the spatial uncertainty is low, for local storms it can be high). The distribution of rainfall gauges is often determined in part by accessibility and convenience, and overall uncertainty of daily rainfall may be easily underestimated. More recent satellite based estimates of rainfall appear to perform well for frontal rains, but not in other rainfall types.
ET Evapotranspiration equations have been fairly well calibrated, but there can be uncertainty over the advection term especially in small catchments. For larger areas energy balance equations may be sufficient.
Q monitoring of outflow can have low uncertainty if ;rating curves' are frequently calibrated. However, the delineation of the watershed (and area used for the calculations) can be off where groundwater flows don't necessarily follow surface catchment delineations and can be underestimated.
TWSC can become negligible if a multi-year balance is considered (verifying the P and Q estimates) but can dominate the balance at a daily time-scale. A major challenge is the depth over which TWSC is to be assessed, as changes in the topsoil can be more easily assessed than that deeper in the soil.
Line 98 Negative ET is possible under 'dew formation' conditions... (be it in only part of a daily temperature cycle)
Line 244 There can be 'bias' (systematic error, e.g. if groundwater flows mean that the basin is not closed and part of outflowing Q is missed; the area of the basin can also be incorrect), part 'measurement error'. As you focus on relatively large basins, the bias term may be relatively small, but for smaller watersheds the bias terms cannot be ignored. Standard techniques such as plotting cumulative Q vs cumulative P give indications, especially if nested Q data exist beyond outflow data.
Line 702-714, Figure 7 - would it make sense to compensate S Hemisphere data for a 6 month shift in seasons? Or even more flexibly to use a hydrological year concept with a standardized month for maximum P.