Technical Note: Reducing the spin-up time of integrated surface water–groundwater models
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionEarth System Observation and Modelling
Environmental Science and Engineering Program
Water Desalination and Reuse Research Center (WDRC)
Date
2014-12-12Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/346781
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
One of the main challenges in the application of coupled or integrated hydrologic models is specifying a catchment's initial conditions in terms of soil moisture and depth-to-water table (DTWT) distributions. One approach to reducing uncertainty in model initialization is to run the model recursively using either a single year or multiple years of forcing data until the system equilibrates with respect to state and diagnostic variables. However, such "spin-up" approaches often require many years of simulations, making them computationally intensive. In this study, a new hybrid approach was developed to reduce the computational burden of the spin-up procedure by using a combination of model simulations and an empirical DTWT function. The methodology is examined across two distinct catchments located in a temperate region of Denmark and a semi-arid region of Australia. Our results illustrate that the hybrid approach reduced the spin-up period required for an integrated groundwater–surface water–land surface model (ParFlow.CLM) by up to 50%. To generalize results to different climate and catchment conditions, we outline a methodology that is applicable to other coupled or integrated modeling frameworks when initialization from an equilibrium state is required.Citation
Technical Note: Reducing the spin-up time of integrated surface water–groundwater models 2014, 18 (12):5169 Hydrology and Earth System SciencesPublisher
Copernicus GmbHAdditional Links
http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/18/5169/2014/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.5194/hess-18-5169-2014