Sensitivity analysis is used to increase our understanding of the evaluated model and ease model parameter estimation. VISCOUS (VarIance-based Sensitivity analysis using COpUlaS) is a given-data, computationally frugal variance-based global sensitivity analysis framework. Grounded in Copula theory, VISCOUS computes the Sobol sensitivity indices using a probability model that describes the relationship between model inputs (e.g., the perturbations in the model parameters) and outputs (e.g., the model responses given a parameter perturbation). In this technical note, we make three contributions to make the VISCOUS framework easier to understand and apply. First, we provide additional derivations of VISCOUS to connect the VISCOUS framework to recent developments in the data science community. We provide didactic examples with simple test functions in order to help a wider group of modelers understand the underpinnings of the VISCOUS framework. Second, we evaluate the VISCOUS framework using three types of Sobol functions and provide a cautionary note on using VISCOUS to approximate Sobol’ sensitivity indices for applications where model inputs are of similar importance. Third, we provide an open-source code of VISCOUS in Python, namely, pyVISCOUS. pyVISCOUS is model-independent and can be applied with user-provided input-output data.

Lakes and reservoirs are an important part of the terrestrial water cycle. However, relatively little attention has been given to lake and reservoir water balance modelling, their impacts, and interaction with complex terrestrial system processes. In this work, we present the implementation of lakes and reservoirs into mizuRoute, a vector-based routing model (termed mizuRoute-Lakes) that is agnostic to the choice of hydrologic or land model. In this work, we demonstrate capabilities of mizuRoute-Lake in modeling the water balance of lakes and reservoirs namely (1) data-driven lake/reservoir models; (2) multi-model lake models; and (3) abstraction from lakes, reservoirs, and river segments. Applications presented in this work are at global, regional, and local scales. The data-driven and parametric capabilities that are provided in mizuRoute enable incorporating past or future altimetry data (e.g. from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography, SWOT, mission for estimation of lakes and reservoirs storage) or information from water management model simulations regarding water demand and reservoir operation under climate change scenarios. We believe the capabilities presented in mizuRoute-Lake will enable the modellers to diagnose and compare water balance models in a more rigorous manner.

Despite the proliferation of computer-based research on hydrology and water resources, such research is typically poorly reproducible. Published studies have low reproducibility due to incomplete availability of data and computer code, and a lack of documentation of workflow processes. This leads to a lack of transparency and efficiency because existing code can neither be quality controlled nor re-used. Given the commonalities between existing process-based hydrological models in terms of their required input data and preprocessing steps, open sharing of code can lead to large efficiency gains for the modeling community. Here we present a model configuration workflow that provides full reproducibility of the resulting model instantiations in a way that separates the model-agnostic preprocessing of specific datasets from the model-specific requirements that models impose on their input files. We use this workflow to create large-domain (global, continental) and local configurations of the Structure for Unifying Multiple Modeling Alternatives (SUMMA) hydrologic model connected to the mizuRoute routing model. These examples show how a relatively complex model setup over a large domain can be organized in a reproducible and structured way that has the potential to accelerate advances in hydrologic modeling for the community as a whole. We provide a tentative blueprint of how community modeling initiatives can be built on top of workflows such as this. We term our workflow the “Community Workflows to Advance Reproducibility in Hydrologic Modeling’‘ (CWARHM; pronounced “swarm”).

Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) has long been recognized as an indispensable tool for model analysis. GSA has been extensively used for model simplification, identifiability analysis, and diagnostic tests, among others. Nevertheless, computationally efficient methodologies are sorely needed for GSA, not only to reduce the computational overhead, but also to improve the quality and robustness of the results. This is especially the case for process-based hydrologic models, as their simulation time is often too high and is typically beyond the availability for a comprehensive GSA. We overcome this computational barrier by developing an efficient variance-based sensitivity analysis using copulas. Our data-driven method, called VISCOUS, approximates the joint probability density function of the given set of input-output pairs using Gaussian mixture copula to provide a given-data estimation of the sensitivity indices. This enables our method to identify dominant hydrologic factors by recycling pre-computed set of model evaluations or existing input-output data, and thus avoids augmenting the computational cost. We used two hydrologic models of increasing complexity (HBV and VIC) to assess the performance of the proposed method. Our results confirm that VISCOUS and the original variance-based method can detect similar important and unimportant factors. However, while being robust, our method can substantially reduce the computational cost. The results here are particularly significant for, though not limited to, process-based models with many uncertain parameters, large domain size, and high spatial and temporal resolution.