Evaluation of the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis data for hydrological model in the Arctic watershed Målselv

Minh Tuan Bui,Linmei Nie,Jinmei Lu

doi:10.2166/wcc.2021.346

Abstract

Abstract The high-resolution Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) data have recently become an alternative input for hydrological models in data-sparse regions. However, the quality of CFSR data for running hydrological models in the Arctic is not well studied yet. This paper aims to compare the quality of CFSR data with ground-based data for hydrological modeling in an Arctic watershed, Målselv. The QSWAT model, a coupling of the hydrological model SWAT (soil and water assessment tool) and the QGIS, was applied in this study. The model ran from 1995 to 2012 with a 3-year warm-up period (1995–1997). Calibration (1998–2007), validation (2008–2012), and uncertainty analyses were performed by the Sequential Uncertainty Fitting Version 2 (SUFI-2) algorithm in the SWAT Calibration Uncertainties Program for each dataset at five hydro-gauging stations within the watershed. The objective function Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency for calibration is 0.65–0.82 with CFSR data and 0.55–0.74 with ground-based data, which indicate higher performance of the high-resolution CFSR data than the existing scattered ground-based data. The CFSR weather grid points showed higher variation in precipitation than the ground-based weather stations across the whole watershed. The calculated average annual rainfall by CFSR data for the whole watershed is approximately 24% higher than that by ground-based data, which results in some higher water balance components. The CFSR data also demonstrates its high capacities to replicate the streamflow hydrograph, in terms of timing and magnitude of peak and low flow. Through examination of the uncertainty coefficients P-factors (≥0.7) and R-factors (≤1.5), this study concludes that CFSR data is a reliable source for running hydrological models in the Arctic watershed Målselv.

Highlights

A watershed is a basic land unit for studying of hydrological cycle and for water resource management and planning (Edwards et al ; Yu & Duffy ). It is defined as a land area where most of the precipitation drains to the same places, e.g., water bodies or low land areas (Edwards et al )
The physically based (Neitsch et al ), semi-distributed model SWAT was applied to test the quality of Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) data
Each sub-basin is further subdivided into hydrologic response units (HRUs) that have homogeneous topography, land use, soil characteristics, and management

Summary

Introduction

A watershed is a basic land unit for studying of hydrological cycle and for water resource management and planning (Edwards et al ; Yu & Duffy ). The ground-based weather stations do not always sufficiently represent the weather pattern across the whole watershed (Fuka et al ) because (1) the sparse spatial distribution and the far distances of the meteorological stations from the watershed to be modeled (Zhang et al ; Tolera et al ); (2) time-series data usually contain gaps and errors; (3) up-to-date datasets are not available. Due to these limitations of ground-based data, finding alternative sources of weather inputs for hydrological models is essential. An alternative source, which has recently been preferred by scientists, is to use the multiyear globally atmospheric reanalyzed data (Fuka et al )

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