the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 04 Feb 2025
Technical note on incorporating natural variability in master recession curves
Abstract. In this technical note, we hypothesise that the master recession curve (MRC) is a continuum rather than a single average curve and the natural variability as evidenced in the range of MRCs represents aleatory uncertainty across the continuum and is the result of antecedent hydroclimatic conditions and heterogenous storage conditions in the unconfined aquifer/s feeding the streamflow. For four streams, representing the range of Australian hydrology, master recession curves were computed for five aleatory conditions (90, 75, 50, 25 and 10 percentiles) using the correlation technique. Observed recessions were superimposed on the plots confirming that the continuum of MRCs represented the observed conditions. For one stream, the Northern Arthur River (a 437 km2 in Western Australia yielding 2.7 mm runoff per year), a qualitative model based on field observations supports the continuum concept.
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RC1: 'Comment on hess-2024-320', Anonymous Referee #1, 17 Apr 2025
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Technical note on incorporating natural variability in master recession curves
The paper focus on incorporating natural variability in master recession curves. It is of great significance for recession analysis. The topic has received much attention in recent years. However, there are still many key issues that need to clarify.
Firstly, there has been a great development of methods for streamflow recession analysis, and there are many alternatives to the correlation method, so why not consider other more popular and sophisticated methods, such as recession analysis based on -dQ/dt~Q. Secondly, the correlation method faces challenges on applications, such as the observation noise in streamflow bring large uncertainty for the calculation of K, especially during low flow period, the inability to consider the continuous recession process by mainly only using the information from the adjacent days. Further, the appropriateness of generating MRCs with frequency from the percentiles of the distribution of K has not been adequately demonstrated. Thus, the robustness of the correlation method and the rationality on computed MRCs at different frequency are needed.
Detail comments:
Lines 11-13. How about the other three catchments?
The section of Introduction. It is hard to catch the key points.
Lines 34-54. This paragraph suggests a tabular presentation. More introduction on the research of the natural variability of recession processes is suggested.
Line 64. How to use the correlation method to compute MRC is not clear. More details are needed.
Figure 1. More evidences or refences are needed to justify kmax.
Line 86. What is the mean of ‘ile’. Is it percentile?
Figure 3. How is the starting point of the MRC determined and how is the observed recession superimposed on the calculated MRC?
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Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2024-320-RC1
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