In the field of cancer research, a scandal occurred at Duke University in the USA in which independent researchers were unable to repeat analysis performed by another group. This led to recommendations by the university and governing organizations to motivate the use of scripting languages to enhance repeatability of research. The hydrology community can easily adopt similar protocols to enhance the integrity of our data analysis and modeling.

There has been much recent debate regarding the future of the hydrological sciences, and several publications have voiced opinions on this subject. This opinion paper seeks to comment and expand on some recent publications that have advocated an increased focus on process modeling while de-emphasizing the focus on detailed attention to parameter estimation. In particular, it offers a perspective that emphasizes a more hydraulic approach to development and implementation of hydrological models.

A meta-analysis on 192 peer-reviewed articles reporting applications of a land surface model in a distributed way reveals that the spatial resolution at which the model is applied has increased over the years, while the calibration and validation time interval has remained unchanged. We argue that the calibration and validation time interval should keep pace with the increase in spatial resolution in order to resolve the processes that are relevant at the applied spatial resolution.