Abstract. Combining numerical models, which simulate water and energy fluxes in the subsurface-land surface-atmosphere system in a physically consistent way, becomes increasingly important to understand and study fluxes at compartmental boundaries and interdependencies of states across these boundaries. Complete state evolutions generated by such models, when run at highest possible resolutions while incorporating as many processes as attainable, may be regarded as a proxy of the real world – a virtual reality – which can be used to test hypotheses on functioning of the coupled terrestrial system and may serve as source for virtual measurements to develop data-assimilation methods. Such simulation systems, however, face severe problems caused by the vastly different scales of the processes acting in the compartments of the terrestrial system. The present study is motivated by the development of cross-compartmental data-assimilation methods, which face the difficulty of data scarcity in the subsurface when applied to real data. With appropriate and realistic measurement operators, the virtual reality not only allows taking virtual observations in any part of the terrestrial system at any density, thus overcoming data-scarcity problems of real-world applications, but also provides full information about true states and parameters aimed to be reconstructed from the measurements by data assimilation. In the present study, we have used the Terrestrial Systems Modeling Platform TerrSysMP, which couples the meteorological model COSMO, the land-surface model CLM, and the subsurface model ParFlow, to set up the virtual reality for a regional terrestrial system roughly oriented at the Neckar catchment in southwest Germany. We find that the virtual reality is in many aspects quite close to real observations of the catchment concerning, e.g., atmospheric boundary-layer height, precipitation, and runoff. But also discrepancies become apparent both in the ability of such models to correctly simulate some processes – which still need improvement – and the realism of the results of some observation operators like the SMOS and SMAP sensors, when faced with model states. In a succeeding step, we will use the virtual reality to generate observations in all compartments of the system for coupled data assimilation. The data assimilation will rely on a coarsened and simplified version of the model system.

We propose an improvement of the overland‐flow parameterization in a distributed hydrological model, which uses a constant horizontal grid resolution and employs the kinematic wave approximation for both hillslope and river channel flow. The standard parameterization lacks any channel flow characteristics for rivers, which results in reduced river flow velocities for streams narrower than the horizontal grid resolution. Moreover, the surface areas, through which these wider model rivers may exchange water with the subsurface, are larger than the real river channels potentially leading to unrealistic vertical flows. We propose an approximation of the subscale channel flow by scaling Manning's roughness in the kinematic wave formulation via a relationship between river width and grid cell size, following a simplified version of the Barré de Saint‐Venant equations (Manning–Strickler equations). The too large exchange areas between model rivers and the subsurface are compensated by a grid resolution‐dependent scaling of the infiltration/exfiltration rate across river beds. We test both scaling approaches in the integrated hydrological model ParFlow. An empirical relation is used for estimating the true river width from the mean annual discharge. Our simulations show that the scaling of the roughness coefficient and the hydraulic conductivity effectively corrects overland flow velocities calculated on the coarse grid leading to a better representation of flood waves in the river channels.

Abstract. Coupled numerical models, which simulate water and energy fluxes in the subsurface–land-surface–atmosphere system in a physically consistent way, are a prerequisite for the analysis and a better understanding of heat and matter exchange fluxes at compartmental boundaries and interdependencies of states across these boundaries. Complete state evolutions generated by such models may be regarded as a proxy of the real world, provided they are run at sufficiently high resolution and incorporate the most important processes. Such a simulated reality can be used to test hypotheses on the functioning of the coupled terrestrial system. Coupled simulation systems, however, face severe problems caused by the vastly different scales of the processes acting in and between the compartments of the terrestrial system, which also hinders comprehensive tests of their realism. We used the Terrestrial Systems Modeling Platform (TerrSysMP), which couples the meteorological Consortium for Small-scale Modeling (COSMO) model, the land-surface Community Land Model (CLM), and the subsurface ParFlow model, to generate a simulated catchment for a regional terrestrial system mimicking the Neckar catchment in southwest Germany, the virtual Neckar catchment. Simulations for this catchment are made for the period 2007–2015 and at a spatial resolution of 400 m for the land surface and subsurface and 1.1 km for the atmosphere. Among a discussion of modeling challenges, the model performance is evaluated based on observations covering several variables of the water cycle. We find that the simulated catchment behaves in many aspects quite close to observations of the real Neckar catchment, e.g., concerning atmospheric boundary-layer height, precipitation, and runoff. But also discrepancies become apparent, both in the ability of the model to correctly simulate some processes which still need improvement, such as overland flow, and in the realism of some observation operators like the satellite-based soil moisture sensors. The whole raw dataset is available for interested users. The dataset described here is available via the CERA database (Schalge et al., 2020): https://doi.org/10.26050/WDCC/Neckar_VCS_v1.

Abstract. Coupled numerical models, which simulate water and energy fluxes in the subsurface-land surface-atmosphere system in a physically consistent way are a prerequisite for the analysis and a better understanding of heat and matter exchange fluxes at compartmental boundaries and interdependencies of states across these boundaries. Complete state evolutions generated by such models may be regarded as a proxy of the real world, provided they are run at sufficiently high resolution and incorporate the most important processes. Such a virtual reality can be used to test hypotheses on the functioning of the coupled terrestrial system. Coupled simulation systems, however, face severe problems caused by the vastly different scales of the processes acting in and between the compartments of the terrestrial system, which also hinders comprehensive tests of their realism. We used the Terrestrial Systems Modeling Platform TerrSysMP, which couples the meteorological model COSMO, the land-surface model CLM, and the subsurface model ParFlow, to generate a virtual catchment for a regional terrestrial system mimicking the Neckar catchment in southwest Germany. Simulations for this catchment are made for the period 2007–2015, and at a spatial resolution of 400 m for the land surface and subsurface and 1.1 km for the atmosphere. Among a discussion of modelling challenges, the model performance is evaluated based on real observations covering several variables of the water cycle. We find that the simulated (virtual) catchment behaves in many aspects quite close to observations of the real Neckar catchment, e.g. concerning atmospheric boundary-layer height, precipitation, and runoff. But also discrepancies become apparent, both in the ability of the model to correctly simulate some processes which still need improvement such as overland flow, and in the realism of some observation operators like the satellite based soil moisture sensors. The whole raw dataset is available for interested users. The dataset described here is available via the CERA database (Schalge et al., 2020): https://doi.org/10.26050/WDCC/Neckar_VCS_v1.