The use of GRDC gauging stations for calibrating large-scale hydrological models

Abstract

Abstract. The Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) provides time series of observed discharges and information on hydrometric stations that are valuable for calibrating and validating the results of hydrological models. We address a common issue in large-scale hydrology that has not been satisfactorily solved, though investigated several times. To compare simulated and observed discharge, grid-based hydrological models must fit reported station locations to the resolution-dependent gridded river network. We introduce an intersection-over-union ratio approach to selected station locations on a coarser grid scale, reducing the errors in assigning stations to the correct upstream basin. We update the 10-year-old database of watershed boundaries with additional stations based on a high-resolution (3 arcsec) river network and provide source codes and high- and low-resolution watershed boundaries to easily select stations for calibration/validation of hydrological models. The dataset is stored on Zenodo with the associated DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6906577 (Burek and Smilovic, 2022).