Evaluation of radiation components in a global freshwater model with station-based observations

  • In many hydrological models, the amount of evapotranspired water is calculated using the potential evapotranspiration (PET) approach. The main driver of several PET approaches is net radiation, whose downward components are usually obtained from meteorological input data, whereas the upward components are calculated by the model itself. Thus, uncertainties can be large due to both the input data and model assumptions. In this study, we compare the radiation components of the WaterGAP Global Hydrology Model, driven by two meteorological input datasets and two radiation setups from ERA-Interim reanalysis. We assess the performance with respect to monthly observations provided by the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) and the Global Energy Balance Archive (GEBA). The assessment is done for the global land area and specifically for energy/water limited regions. The results indicate that there is no optimal radiation input throughout the model variants, but standard meteorological input datasets perform better than those directly obtained by ERA-Interim reanalysis for the key variable net radiation. The low number of observations for some radiation components, as well as the scale mismatch between station observations and 0.5° × 0.5° grid cell size, limits the assessment.

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Author:Hannes Müller SchmiedORCiDGND, Richard Müller, Arturo Sanchez-Lorenzo, Bodo AhrensORCiDGND, Martin Wild
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-451365
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3390/w8100450
ISSN:2073-4441
Parent Title (English):Water
Publisher:MDPI
Place of publication:Basel
Contributor(s):Karl-Erich Lindenschmidt
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2016
Date of first Publication:2016/10/14
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2017/11/30
Tag:BSRN; GEBA; global hydrological modeling; radiation; uncertainty; validation with station observations
Volume:8
Issue:10, Art. 450
Page Number:25
First Page:1
Last Page:25
Note:
© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
HeBIS-PPN:432468609
Institutes:Geowissenschaften / Geographie / Geowissenschaften
Fachübergreifende Einrichtungen / Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum (BiK-F)
Dewey Decimal Classification:5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 55 Geowissenschaften, Geologie / 550 Geowissenschaften
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Open-Access-Publikationsfonds:Geowissenschaften / Geographie
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0