Author(s): Rajib Maity; Sayan Dey; Akash Koppa
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: HCCS model; Hydroclimatology; Watershed hydroclimatic modeling; Climate forcing; Prediction; Streamflow
Abstract: In the context of a changing climate, modeling the response of a watershed (e.g., streamflow generation, ground water recharge, and evapotranspiration) to other hydroclimatological variables is a research challenge. Most of the existing approaches attempt to consider and conceptualize different hydrological processes. However, time varying watershed characteristics are generally not considered. As a consequence, the consistency (decadal to climatic scale) of the model performance is affected under the changing climate and the changing watershed characteristics that are not accounted for. Here lies the importance of the recently developed Hydro Climatic Conceptual Streamflow (HCCS) model. The background research question of the HCCS model is as follows: Is it possible to model watershed responses with the simultaneous consideration of the changing climate and the time varying watershed characteristics? In this paper, the efficacy of the HCCS model is demonstrated in the context of a partially gauged tropical river basin in India. The HCCS model is developed considering the (short-term) watershed wetness condition and major hydrologic components to predict basin-scale streamflow using hydroclimatic inputs–rainfall, maximum temperature and minimum temperature. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the HCCS model is developed and demonstrated in this paper. The HCCS model is shown to be suitable for daily streamflow prediction and also partitioning rainfall into three major components at catchment scale. In addition to the daily streamflow variation, the HCCS model is also able to provide the additional overall (spatially averaged) estimates of ground water recharge component and evapotranspiration component from the entire catchment. The methodology, being general, shown a promise to be applicable to any other tropical watersheds as well. At the end, the working principle of the developed Graphical User Interface (GUI) for HCCS model is presented that may be beneficial to the practitioners and policy makers.
Year: 2014