Comprehensive Analysis of the NOAA National Water Model: A Call for Heterogeneous Formulations and Diagnostic Model Selection

Abstract

With an increasing number of continental‐scale hydrologic models, the ability to evaluate performance is key to understanding uncertainty and making improvements to the model(s). We hypothesize that any model, running a single set of physics, cannot be “properly” calibrated for the range of hydroclimatic diversity as seen in the contenintal United States. Here, we evaluate the NOAA National Water Model (NWM) version 2.0 historical streamflow record in over 4,200 natural and controlled basins using the Nash‐Sutcliffe Efficiency metric decomposed into relative performance, and conditional, and unconditional bias. Each of these is evaluated in the contexts of meteorologic, landscape, and anthropogenic characteristics to better understand where the model does poorly, what potentially causes the poor performance, and what similarities systemically poor performing areas share. The primary objective is to pinpoint traits in places with good/bad performance and low/high bias. NWM relative performance is higher when there is high precipitation, snow coverage (depth and fraction), and barren area. Low relative skill is associated with high potential evapotranspiration, aridity, moisture‐and‐energy phase correlation, and forest, shrubland, grassland, and imperviousness area. We see less bias in locations with high precipitation, moisture‐and‐energy phase correlation, barren, and grassland areas and more bias in areas with high aridity, snow coverage/fraction, and urbanization. The insights gained can help identify key hydrological factors underpinning NWM predictive skill; enforce the need for regionalized parameterization and modeling; and help inform heterogenous modeling systems, like the NOAA Next Generation Water Resource Modeling Framework, to enhance ongoing development and evaluation.

AHGestimation: An R package for computing robust, mass preserving hydraulic geometries and rating curves

“…While extensively studied at local scales, these relationships remain unquantified for the majority of stream reaches globally, including in the United States. As a result, large-scale models often rely on incomplete approximations, leading to less accurate streamflow estimates (Fang et al, 2024;Heldmyer et al, 2022;Johnson et al, 2023) and flood forecasts (Johnson et al, 2019;Maidment, 2017;NOAA, 2023;Zheng et al, 2018). For instance, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Water Model (Cosgrove et al, 2024) uses trapezoidal geometries (Gochis et al, 2020) that are in part derived from hydraulic geometry relationships and drainage area assumptions found in Bieger et al (2015), Bieger et al (2016), andBlackburn-Lynch et al (2017).…”