Analysis of hydrological responses using semi-distributed conceptual models in a mountainous catchment in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region

ABSTRACT

The Hindu Kush Karakoram Himalaya region, an important global water unit, is the origin of 10 major river basins. The Upper Indus basin, a part of this region, is a primary water source for the downstream population and is primarily fed by snow and glacier melt. Four semi-distributed conceptual hydrological models were used to understand this basin’s hydrological responses. As the observed data was unavailable, global gridded precipitation and discharge data from the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) were used to set up the model at the catchment outlet. Degree-day factor (DDF)-based snow and glacier modules are incorporated into the model structure to measure melt contribution. The results showed very good performance of all four models with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency > 0.75, with the GR4J model exhibiting superior performance. The dominance of snow and glacier melt during summer monsoon affects the peak discharge and offers insights for investigations at the sub-basin scale.

KEYWORDS:

• hydrological modelling
• conceptual models
• Uppe Indus basin
• snowmelt
• glacier melt

Editor R. Singh Associate Editor (not assigned)

Editor R. Singh Associate Editor (not assigned)

Author contributions

Mani Kanta Malla: Conceptualization; methodology; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing; data curation; investigation; validation; visualization; formal analysis.

Dhyan Singh Arya: Investigation; validation; formal analysis; supervision; writing – review and editing; conceptualization; methodology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used for this study were downloaded from the climate data store of ECMWF (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/search?type=dataset). All the analyses were performed using R, and the codes are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2024.2378138