Model Calibration and discharge simulations during extreme drought events for the Rhine River Basin using WRF-Hydro.

Recent drought events, leading to low water levels, have significantly affected navigation through the Rhine River and the transportation of goods. It has become imperative to analyze the conditions in which these events occurs to establish actions to prevent monetary losses. The main focus of this study is to test how well the hydrological model WRF-Hydro can capture extremely low water levels in the Rhine River basin. Using the meteorological reanalysis dataset ERA5 as forcing data for the model, we simulate the streamflow from January 2016 to December 2018, which includes the recent drought event in the Summer of 2018. Within the model, the calibration of various parameters allows the evaluation of the streamflow from WRF-Hydro to be contrasted with the daily observed values. The parameters influencing the amount of water routed across the basin are generally constant throughout the domain. Land use cover and terrain slope were used to create spatially distributed parameter values, avoiding the calibration process of testing a range of values and, therefore, reducing computational time. These promising results enables us to analyze recent and future drought events under different climate conditions.