| Title: | Assessing the impact of CFSR and local climate datasets on hydrological modeling performance in the mountainous Black Sea catchment |
| Authors: | Cuceloglu, C. and I. Ozturk |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Journal: | Water |
| Volume (Issue): | 11(11) |
| Pages: | |
| Article ID: | 2277 |
| DOI: | 10.3390/w11112277 |
| URL (non-DOI journals): | |
| Model: | SWAT |
| Broad Application Category: | hydrologic only |
| Primary Application Category: | climate data effects |
| Secondary Application Category: | hydrologic assessment |
| Watershed Description: | 2,445 km^2 Melen River, which drains to the Black Sea in northwest Turkey. |
| Calibration Summary: | |
| Validation Summary: | |
| General Comments: | |
| Abstract: | Precise representation of precipitation input is one of the predominant factors affecting the
simulation of hydrological processes in catchments. Choosing the representative climate datasets
is crucial to obtain accurate model results, especially in mountainous regions. Hence, this study
assesses the suitability of the Climate Forecasting System Reanalysis (CFSR) and local climate data
to simulate the streamflow at multiple gauges in the data-scarce mountainous Black Sea catchment.
Moreover, the applicability of using the elevations band in the model is also tested. The Soil and Water
Assessment Tool (SWAT) is used as a hydrological simulator. Calibration and uncertainty analysis are
performed by using SWAT-CUP with the Sequential Uncertainty Fitting (SUFI-2) algorithm based on
monthly streamflow data at six different hydrometric stations located at different altitudes. The results
reveal that the CFSR dataset provides quite reasonable agreements between the simulated and the
observed streamflow at the gauge stations compared to the local dataset. However, SWAT simulations
with both datasets result in poor performance for the upstream catchments of the study area.
Considering orographic precipitation by applying elevation bands to the local climate dataset using
CFSR data leads also to significant improvements to the model’s performance. Model results obtained
with both climate datasets result in similar objective metrics, and larger uncertainty with a coefficient
variation (CV) ranging from 73% to 107%. This paper mainly highlights that (i) global climate datasets
(i.e., CFSR) can be a good alternative especially for data-scarce regions, (ii) elevation band application
can improve the model performance for the catchments with high elevation gradients, and iii) CFSR
data can be used to determine precipitation lapse rate in data scarce-regions. |
| Language: | English |
| Keywords: | CFSR; calibration; MelenWatershed; SWAT Model; SWAT-CUP; local climate data |