Modelling stream temperature with multiple hydroclimatological temperature models
- 1Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
- 2Chair of Hydrology and River Basin Management, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
- 3International Joint Laboratory of Watershed Ecological Security of Middle Route Project of South-North Water Diversion in Henan Province, College of Water Resource and Environment Engineering, Nanyang Normal University, Nanyang, China
- 4Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- 5Center for the Pan-Third Pole Environment, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China
- 6Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science (Ministry of Education of China), East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
- 7School of Geographical Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
Stream temperature is an important parameter to evaluate the water quality and biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems. Climate change and human activities (e.g. land use change) are affecting stream temperature, potentially leading to negative impacts on the habitats of native species and sustainability of aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, it is important to monitor and understand stream temperature under different conditions to better protect the aquatic ecosystems. The conventional in-situ measurements from gauge stations provide the most accurate stream temperature data, but they are often sparse and limited in terms of data length (temporal) and spatial coverages (many regions have no measurements). Stream temperature modelling is an effective way to extrapolate from limited measurements in both space and time, and it is the only way to predict the future to assess the climate change impacts. The stream temperature is influenced by meteorological and hydrological factors, and the relationship between the stream temperature and physical conditions is complex and can vary spatially and temporally. Different statistical and process/physically-based stream temperature models have been developed with the latter generally performing better. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a semi-distributed process-based hydrological model built with a simple statistical model to simulate stream temperature using only air temperature. Two hydroclimatological stream temperature models were recently developed to improve the capability of the SWAT model for simulation of stream temperature by considering influences of hydrological conditions and more detailed water-air heat transfer processes. The two recently developed models were tested mainly in a few river basins in U.S. and Canada. This study aims to compare and evaluate -for the first time- the performance of three models in simulating stream temperature in the Vils Basin located in Bavaria, Germany. The SWAT model is first calibrated and validated against the measured streamflow at the basin outlet on a daily timescale to ensure satisfactory streamflow simulation. Then the three different stream temperature models are run and evaluated with measured stream temperature at both daily and monthly time scales. The parameters and simulation results from the three different stream temperature models are analyzed. This study complements existing studies to improve our understanding of the performance of different stream temperature models in different river basins.
How to cite: Duan, Z., Duggan, E., Tuo, Y., Li, Y., Dong, J., Liu, J., and Gao, H.: Modelling stream temperature with multiple hydroclimatological temperature models, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-13198, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-13198, 2022.
