Think twice – pitfalls in hydrological modelling

Failures are only common in science, and hydrological modelling is no exception. However, we modellers usually do not like to talk about our mistakes or our overly optimistic expectations and, thus, “negative” results usually do not get published. While there are examples where model failures indicated issues with the observational data, in this presentation the focus is on modelling studies, where some more (realistic) thinking could have helped to avoid disappointments. Examples include the unnecessary comparison of numerically identical model variants, naively optimistic expectations about increasing the physical basis of bucket-type models and excessively hopeful assumptions about the value of data.