Identification

Title

Integrating a water tracer model into WRF-Hydro for characterizing the effect of lateral flow in hydrologic simulations

Abstract

Most current land models approximate terrestrial hydrological processes as one-dimensional vertical flow, neglecting lateral water movement from ridges to valleys. Such lateral flow is fundamental at catchment scales and becomes crucial for finer-scale land models. To test the effect of incorporating lateral flow toward three-dimensional representations of hydrological processes in the next generation land models, we integrate a water tracer model into the WRF-Hydro framework to track water movement from precipitation to discharge and evapotranspiration. This hydrologic-tracer integrated system allows us to identify the key mechanisms by which lateral flow affects the flow paths and transit times in WRF-Hydro. By comparing modeling experiments with and without lateral routing in two contrasting catchments, we determine the impacts of lateral flow on the transit times of precipitation event-water. Results show that with limited hydrologic connectivity, lateral flow extends the transit times by reducing (increasing) event-water drainage loss (accumulation) in ridges (valleys) and allowing reinfiltration of infiltration-excess flow, which is missing in most land models. On the contrary with high hydrologic connectivity, lateral flow can effectively accelerate the water release to streams and reduce the transit time. However, the transit times are substantially underestimated by the model compared with isotope-derived estimates, indicating model limitations in representing flow paths and transit times. This study provides some insights on the fundamental differences in terrestrial hydrology simulated by land models with and without lateral flow representation.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d74f1vz4

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-07-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact