Effect of data length, spin-up period and spatial model resolution on fully distributed hydrological model calibration in the Moselle basin

ABSTRACT

Subjective decisions in hydrologic model calibration can have drastic impacts on our understanding of basin processes and simulated fluxes. Here, we present a multicase calibration approach to determine three pillars of an appropriate hydrological model configuration, i.e. calibration data length, spin-up period, and spatial resolution, using a spatially distributed meso-scale hydrological model (mHM) together with a dynamically dimensioned search (DDS) algorithm and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) for the Moselle basin. The results show that a 10-year calibration data length, 2-year spin-up period, and 4-km model resolution are appropriate for the Moselle basin to reduce the computational burden while simulating streamflow with a decent performance. Although the calibration data length and spatial resolution are related to the extent and quality of the data, and the spin-up period is basin dependent, analysing the combined effects further allowed us to understand the interactions of these three usually overlooked pillars in the mHM configuration.

KEYWORDS:

• mHM
• mesoscale hydrologic model
• Moselle River
• model calibration
• spatial resolution
• spin-up period

Editor A. Castellarin Associate Editor M. Newcomer

Editor A. Castellarin Associate Editor M. Newcomer

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support for the SPACE project by the Villum Foundation (http://villumfonden.dk/) through their Young Investigator Programme (grant VKR023443). The second author is supported by the National Center for High Performance Computing of Turkey (UHeM) [under Grant number 1007292019] and Ir. Cornelis Lely Stichting [under Grant number 20957310].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Dr. Ir. Cornelis Lely Stichting [Grant number 20957310]; National Center for High Performance Computing of Turkey (UHeM) [Grant number 1007292019]; Villum Fonden [Grant number VKR023443].