Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
ABSTRACT One of the major problems in macroscale hydrological modelling is the assessment of areal heterogeneity in important land surface characteristics, such as topography, land use, land cover, soil, vegetation and hydrological characteristics. After a brief discussion of spatial scales to be covered and related categories of models to be applied two examples are presented which underline the problems involved in the application of lumped models for large areas, like grid areas of general atmospheric circulation models (GCMs). A strategy for a more appropriate hydrologically sound structuring of macroscale hydrological models is then outlined which takes into account the following facts and features: (1) zones of ‘uniform’ atmospheric forcing, (2) landscape patchiness, (3) intra-patch heterogeneity, (4) a ‘Two-Domains-Modelling’ concept, which is essential for the coupling of atmospheric and land-surface hydrological models.
INTRODUCTION
Global modelling is the subject of two of the most challenging recent international programmes:
– The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and
– The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) – a Study of Global Change.
A main objective in both programmes is to improve land surface process descriptions (parameterisations) to be applied at large scales, up to the scale of grid areas of global atmospheric circulation models (GCMs) which cover about 104–105km2.
Problems in large scale land-surface process modelling and some improvements achieved during the last years are briefly discussed in the following and suggestions are made for further progress.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.