Publications des scientifiques de l'IRD

Zulkafli Z., Buytaert W., Onof C., Lavado W., Guyot Jean-Loup. (2013). A critical assessment of the JULES land surface model hydrology for humid tropical environments. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 17 (3), p. 1113-1132. ISSN 1027-5606.

Titre du document
A critical assessment of the JULES land surface model hydrology for humid tropical environments
Année de publication
2013
Type de document
Article référencé dans le Web of Science WOS:000316961300017
Auteurs
Zulkafli Z., Buytaert W., Onof C., Lavado W., Guyot Jean-Loup
Source
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2013, 17 (3), p. 1113-1132 ISSN 1027-5606
Global land surface models (LSMs) such as the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) are originally developed to provide surface boundary conditions for climate models. They are increasingly used for hydrological simulation, for instance to simulate the impacts of land use changes and other perturbations on the water cycle. This study investigates how well such models represent the major hydrological fluxes at the relevant spatial and temporal scales - an important question for reliable model applications in poorly understood, data-scarce environments. The JULES-LSM is implemented in a 360 000 km(2) humid tropical mountain basin of the Peruvian Andes-Amazon at 12-km grid resolution, forced with daily satellite and climate reanalysis data. The simulations are evaluated using conventional discharge-based evaluation methods, and by further comparing the magnitude and internal variability of the basin surface fluxes such as evapotranspiration, throughfall, and surface and subsurface runoff of the model with those observed in similar environments elsewhere. We find reasonably positive model efficiencies and high correlations between the simulated and observed streamflows, but high root-mean-square errors affecting the performance in smaller, upper sub-basins. We attribute this to errors in the water balance and JULES-LSM's inability to model baseflow. We also found a tendency to under-represent the high evapotranspiration rates of the region. We conclude that strategies to improve the representation of tropical systems to be (1) addressing errors in the forcing and (2) incorporating local wetland and regional flood-plain in the subsurface representation.
Plan de classement
Sciences fondamentales / Techniques d'analyse et de recherche [020] ; Hydrologie [062]
Description Géographique
PEROU ; ANDES ; AMAZONIE
Localisation
Fonds IRD [F B010060784]
Identifiant IRD
fdi:010060784
Contact