Benchmarking the predictive capability of hydrological models for river flow and flood peak predictions across a large-sample of catchments in Great Britain

Abstract

Abstract. Benchmarking model performance across large samples of catchments is useful to guide future model development. Given uncertainties in the observational data we use to drive and evaluate hydrological models, and uncertainties in the structure and parameterisation of models we use to produce hydrological simulations and predictions, it is essential that model evaluation is undertaken within an uncertainty analysis framework. Here, we benchmark the capability of multiple, lumped hydrological models across Great Britain, by focusing on daily flow and peak flow simulation. Four hydrological model structures from the Framework for Understanding Structural Errors (FUSE) were applied to over 1100 catchments. Model performance was then evaluated using a standard performance metric for daily flows, and more novel performance metrics for peak flows considering parameter uncertainty. Our results show that simple, lumped hydrological models were able to produce adequate simulations across most of Great Britain, with median Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency scores of 0.72–0.78 across all catchments. All four models showed a similar spatial pattern of performance, producing better simulations in the wetter catchments to the west, and poor model performance in Scotland and southeast England. Poor model performance was often linked to the catchment water balance, with models unable to capture the catchment hydrology where the water balance did not close. Overall, performance was similar between model structures, but different models performed better for different catchment characteristics and for assessing daily or peak flows, demonstrating the value of using an ensemble of model structures. This research demonstrates what conceptual lumped models can achieve as a performance benchmark, as well as providing interesting insights into where and why these simple models may fail. The large number of river catchments included in this study makes it an appropriate benchmark for any future developments of a national model of Great Britain.

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