A Review on the Development of Two-Way Coupled Atmospheric-Hydrological Models

Abstract

The past two decades have seen an intensive development in two-way coupled atmospheric and hydrological models, providing new opportunities to thoroughly understand hydrology–atmosphere coupling and improve hydrometeorological forecasting, which has not been possible before. This paper summarizes recent developments in hydrological presentation in land surface models (LSMs) and climate models, and the two-way coupling of atmospheric and hydrological models. The fully coupled models have been widely applied in identifying the impact of lateral surface and subsurface water transport in a land–atmosphere coupled system, and hydrometeorological simulations using techniques such as parameter calibration, data assimilation, and hydrology model structure revision have been used to improve the model accuracy. However, their applications still face major challenges, e.g., the complexity of hydrological parameter calibration, the lack of understanding of the physical mechanisms at high resolution, the parameterization of anthropogenic activities, and the limitations in simulation domain and period. Despite these difficulties, fully coupled atmospheric and hydrological models will gradually evolve into powerful tools to reproduce regional water cycles, offering significant potential for scientifically investigating water resources security issues affected by both climate change and human activities.

A model for continental-scale water erosion and sediment transport and its application to the Yellow River Basin

“…This thesis was carried out within the framework of the Atmospheric and Hydrological Modelling System (AHMS) project (Jiang et al, 2020(Jiang et al, , 2022Xia, 2019) of the University of Cologne, in association with the Heisenberg Programme "Multiscale Simulation of Earth Surface Processes" at the University of Duisburg-Essen (project number: 434377576) and SFB 1211 "Earth -Evolution at the Dry Limit" (project number: 268236062) jointly, support by German Research Foundation (DFG). This joint project aims to improve the understanding of the hydrological, erosion and sediment transport processes and to investigate the response of the hydrological cycle and sediment yield to climate change and anthropogenic impacts.…”

“…The Atmospheric and Hydrological-Sediment Modelling System (AHMS-SED) is developed by incorporating a water erosion and sediment transport module into AHMS (Jiang et al, 2022;Xia, 2019). Specifically, the water erosion and sediment transport model of CASC2D-SED (Rojas et al, 2003) is modified and incorporated into the AHMS.…”

“…As shown in Fig. 3.1, the Atmospheric and Hydrological Modelling System (AHMS) is a fully coupled atmospheric and hydrological modelling system (Xia, 2019).…”

“…The main purpose of this section is to develop a hydrological model for long-term, large-scale hydrological processes in arid and semi-arid basins, focusing on the Yellow River Basin. Our model development builds on the offline mode of the coupled Atmospheric and Hydrological Modelling System (AHMS) developed at the University of Cologne (Jiang et al, 2020;Xia, 2019). An example of the AHMS applications to wet hydrological basins can be found in Xia et al (2022).…”

Recent Developments to the SimSphere Land Surface Modelling Tool for the Study of Land–Atmosphere Interactions

“…SVATs aim to describe processes that regulate mass and energy transport in the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system (radiation, water transport, and turbulence) and to provide estimates of the variables at a detailed time step [19,20]. These mathematical models provide a comprehensive understanding of the physical processes that control the movement of matter and energy in soil, vegetation, and atmosphere [20][21][22]. SVAT schemes combined with a planetary boundary layer (PBL) model are considered to be the commonly adopted model framework at regional spatial scales [23,24].…”