Articles | Volume 18, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2409-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2409-2025
Review and perspective paper
 | Highlight paper
 | 
23 Apr 2025
Review and perspective paper | Highlight paper |  | 23 Apr 2025

Graphical representation of global water models

Hannes Müller Schmied, Simon Newland Gosling, Marlo Garnsworthy, Laura Müller, Camelia-Eliza Telteu, Atiq Kainan Ahmed, Lauren Seaby Andersen, Julien Boulange, Peter Burek, Jinfeng Chang, He Chen, Lukas Gudmundsson, Manolis Grillakis, Luca Guillaumot, Naota Hanasaki, Aristeidis Koutroulis, Rohini Kumar, Guoyong Leng, Junguo Liu, Xingcai Liu, Inga Menke, Vimal Mishra, Yadu Pokhrel, Oldrich Rakovec, Luis Samaniego, Yusuke Satoh, Harsh Lovekumar Shah, Mikhail Smilovic, Tobias Stacke, Edwin Sutanudjaja, Wim Thiery, Athanasios Tsilimigkras, Yoshihide Wada, Niko Wanders, and Tokuta Yokohata

Related authors

The global water resources and use model WaterGAP v2.2e: description and evaluation of modifications and new features
Hannes Müller Schmied, Tim Trautmann, Sebastian Ackermann, Denise Cáceres, Martina Flörke, Helena Gerdener, Ellen Kynast, Thedini Asali Peiris, Leonie Schiebener, Maike Schumacher, and Petra Döll
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 8817–8852, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8817-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-8817-2024, 2024
Short summary
Leveraging multi-variable observations to reduce and quantify the output uncertainty of a global hydrological model: evaluation of three ensemble-based approaches for the Mississippi River basin
Petra Döll, Howlader Mohammad Mehedi Hasan, Kerstin Schulze, Helena Gerdener, Lara Börger, Somayeh Shadkam, Sebastian Ackermann, Seyed-Mohammad Hosseini-Moghari, Hannes Müller Schmied, Andreas Güntner, and Jürgen Kusche
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 28, 2259–2295, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2259-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-2259-2024, 2024
Short summary
Scenario setup and forcing data for impact model evaluation and impact attribution within the third round of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP3a)
Katja Frieler, Jan Volkholz, Stefan Lange, Jacob Schewe, Matthias Mengel, María del Rocío Rivas López, Christian Otto, Christopher P. O. Reyer, Dirk Nikolaus Karger, Johanna T. Malle, Simon Treu, Christoph Menz, Julia L. Blanchard, Cheryl S. Harrison, Colleen M. Petrik, Tyler D. Eddy, Kelly Ortega-Cisneros, Camilla Novaglio, Yannick Rousseau, Reg A. Watson, Charles Stock, Xiao Liu, Ryan Heneghan, Derek Tittensor, Olivier Maury, Matthias Büchner, Thomas Vogt, Tingting Wang, Fubao Sun, Inga J. Sauer, Johannes Koch, Inne Vanderkelen, Jonas Jägermeyr, Christoph Müller, Sam Rabin, Jochen Klar, Iliusi D. Vega del Valle, Gitta Lasslop, Sarah Chadburn, Eleanor Burke, Angela Gallego-Sala, Noah Smith, Jinfeng Chang, Stijn Hantson, Chantelle Burton, Anne Gädeke, Fang Li, Simon N. Gosling, Hannes Müller Schmied, Fred Hattermann, Jida Wang, Fangfang Yao, Thomas Hickler, Rafael Marcé, Don Pierson, Wim Thiery, Daniel Mercado-Bettín, Robert Ladwig, Ana Isabel Ayala-Zamora, Matthew Forrest, and Michel Bechtold
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 1–51, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-1-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-1-2024, 2024
Short summary
Use of satellite remote sensing to validate reservoir operations in global hydrological models: a case study from the CONUS
Kedar Otta, Hannes Müller Schmied, Simon N. Gosling, and Naota Hanasaki
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2023-215,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2023-215, 2023
Revised manuscript not accepted
Short summary
Globally widespread and increasing violations of environmental flow envelopes
Vili Virkki, Elina Alanärä, Miina Porkka, Lauri Ahopelto, Tom Gleeson, Chinchu Mohan, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Martina Flörke, Dieter Gerten, Simon N. Gosling, Naota Hanasaki, Hannes Müller Schmied, Niko Wanders, and Matti Kummu
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 3315–3336, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3315-2022,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-3315-2022, 2022
Short summary

Related subject area

Hydrology
LM4-SHARC v1.0: resolving the catchment-scale soil–hillslope aquifer–river continuum for the GFDL Earth system modeling framework
Minki Hong, Nathaniel Chaney, Sergey Malyshev, Enrico Zorzetto, Anthony Preucil, and Elena Shevliakova
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 2275–2301, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2275-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-2275-2025, 2025
Short summary
Selecting a conceptual hydrological model using Bayes' factors computed with replica-exchange Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and thermodynamic integration
Damian N. Mingo, Remko Nijzink, Christophe Ley, and Jack S. Hale
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1709–1736, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1709-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1709-2025, 2025
Short summary
The Water Table Model (WTM) (v2.0.1): coupled groundwater and dynamic lake modelling
Kerry L. Callaghan, Andrew D. Wickert, Richard Barnes, and Jacqueline Austermann
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1463–1486, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1463-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1463-2025, 2025
Short summary
Modelling rainfall with a Bartlett–Lewis process: pyBL (v1.0.0), a Python software package and an application with short records
Chi-Ling Wei, Pei-Chun Chen, Chien-Yu Tseng, Ting-Yu Dai, Yun-Ting Ho, Ching-Chun Chou, Christian Onof, and Li-Pen Wang
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1357–1373, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1357-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1357-2025, 2025
Short summary
Virtual Joint Field Campaign: a framework of synthetic landscapes to assess multiscale measurement methods of water storage
Till Francke, Cosimo Brogi, Alby Duarte Rocha, Michael Förster, Maik Heistermann, Markus Köhli, Daniel Rasche, Marvin Reich, Paul Schattan, Lena Scheiffele, and Martin Schrön
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 819–842, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-819-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-819-2025, 2025
Short summary

Cited articles

Abbott, B. W., Bishop, K., Zarnetske, J. P., Minaudo, C., Chapin, F. S., Krause, S., Hannah, D. M., Conner, L., Ellison, D., Godsey, S. E., Plont, S., Marçais, J., Kolbe, T., Huebner, A., Frei, R. J., Hampton, T., Gu, S., Buhman, M., Sara Sayedi, S., Ursache, O., Chapin, M., Henderson, K. D., and Pinay, G.: Human domination of the global water cycle absent from depictions and perceptions, Nat. Geosci., 12, 533–540, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0374-y, 2019. a, b, c, d, e, f, g
Bierkens, M. F. P., Bell, V. A., Burek, P., Chaney, N., Condon, L. E., David, C. H., De Roo, A., Döll, P., Drost, N., Famiglietti, J. S., Flörke, M., Gochis, D. J., Houser, P., Hut, R., Keune, J., Kollet, S., Maxwell, R. M., Reager, J. T., Samaniego, L., Sudicky, E., Sutanudjaja, E. H., Van De Giesen, N., Winsemius, H., and Wood, E. F.: Hyper-resolution global hydrological modelling: what is next: “Everywhere and locally relevant”, Hydrol. Process., 29, 310–320, https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.10391, 2015. a
Burek, P., Satoh, Y., Kahil, T., Tang, T., Greve, P., Smilovic, M., Guillaumot, L., Zhao, F., and Wada, Y.: Development of the Community Water Model (CWatM v1.04) – a high-resolution hydrological model for global and regional assessment of integrated water resources management, Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 3267–3298, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-3267-2020, 2020. a
Butts, M. B., Payne, J. T., Kristensen, M., and Madsen, H.: An evaluation of the impact of model structure on hydrological modelling uncertainty for streamflow simulation, J. Hydrol., 298, 242–266, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2004.03.042, 2004. a
Cardak, O.: Science Student's Misconceptions of the Water Cycle According to their Drawings, J. Appl. Sci., 9, 865–873, 2009. a, b
Download
Executive editor
Graphical representations of modelling processes play an important role in communicating the nature of models to their users, and to the downstream users of the outputs of those models. This paper takes an innovative approach to developing and disseminating graphical model representations in a consistent manner across a whole research community. By publishing these together as a journal paper, the rigour and accuracy of these representations has been subjected to peer review. The quality of the diagrams themselves is high, and the process undertaken to produce them is an examplar of good practice in disseminating science.
Short summary
Global water models contribute to the evaluation of important natural and societal issues but are – as all models – simplified representation of reality. So, there are many ways to calculate the water fluxes and storages. This paper presents a visualization of 16 global water models using a standardized visualization and the pathway towards this common understanding. Next to academic education purposes, we envisage that these diagrams will help researchers, model developers, and data users.
Share