Using Runoff Data to Calibrate the Community Land Model

Abstract:

We present a statistical method for calibrating the Community Land Model (CLM) using streamflow observations collected between 1999 and 2008 at the outlet of two river basins from the Model Parameter Estimation Experiment (MOPEX), Oostanaula River at Resaca GA, and Walnut River at Winfield KS.. The observed streamflow shows variability over a large range of time-scales, none of which significantly dominates the others; consequently, the time-series seems noisy and is difficult to be directly used in model parameter estimation efforts without significant filtering.

We perform a multi-resolution wavelet decomposition of the observed streamflow, and use the wavelet power coefficients (WPC) as the tuning data. We construct a mapping (a surrogate model) between WPC and three hydrological parameters of the CLM using a training set of 256 CLM runs. The dependence of WPC on the parameters is complex and cannot be captured using a surrogate unless the parameter combinations yield physically plausible model predictions, i.e., those that are skillful when compared to observations. Retaining only the top quartile of the runs ensures skillfulness, as measured by the RMS error between observations and CLM predictions. This “screening” of the training data yields a region (the “valid” region) in the parameter space where accurate surrogate models can be created.

We construct a classifier for the “valid” region, and, in conjunction with the surrogate models for WPC, pose a Bayesian inverse problem for the three hydrological parameters. The inverse problem is solved using an adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to construct a three-dimensional posterior distribution for the hydrological parameters. Posterior predictive tests using the surrogate model reveal that the posterior distribution is more predictive than the nominal values of the parameters, which are used as default values in the current version of CLM. The effectiveness of the inversion is then validated by testing the posterior samples by performing real CLM simulations at both sites.