Calibration of Three Sophisticated Operational Hydrological Forecast Models Using Land-Data Assimilation: Comparison of Results Over Selected Basins in Romania

This talk will present the results of calibrating operational implementations of the NWSRFS, the LIS-NOAH-D fully-routed model, and the TOPLATS semi-distributed model across numerous basins on behalf of the Romanian Institute of Hydrology and Water Management (INHGA). This work represents the end-point hand-off of these models to the Institute, forming the core of INHGA's decision-support system for hydrological forecasting and warning in the early 21st century (DESWAT).

We will begin with a cogent review of the three modeling systems and their integrated operational land-data assimilation system, followed by a short description of calibration methodologies. The balance of the talk will compare and contrast results -- achieved on the same basins with the same sets of forcing and stream-gauge data -- between the three different models. A variety of skill scores, including RMSE, MAE, Bias-Error, and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiencies, will be used to reveal and quantify the performance characteristics of the tripartite operational modeling system across the six-year calibration period. Differences in model scales between lumped, semi-distributed, and distributed will be emphasized in order to put the calibration results in context and explicate the relative strengths and weaknesses of each model.