Adaptivity of Budyko Hypothesis in Evaluating Interannual Variability of Watershed Water Balance in Northern China
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19, Issue 4
Abstract
This study evaluates the performance of three Budyko-type equations (Fu’s equation, Turc-Pike’s equation, and Milly’s equation) in modeling annual evapotranspiration in 32 watersheds covering both humid and arid regions in Northern China. Daily meteorological data and monthly runoff data are used to calculate potential and actual evapotranspirations in the 32 watersheds. The results show that the Budyko-type equations are adaptive in predicting annual evapotranspiration over most of the watersheds, and Fu’s and Turc-Pike’s equations perform better than Milly’s. In addition, the validity of the framework by Koster and Suarez in predicting the evapotranspiration deviation ratio (EDR) (i.e., the ratio of the standard deviation of evapotranspiration to the standard deviation of rainfall) based on Fu’s and Ture-Pike’s equations is also examined. Given the unexpected Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency values ( and in Fu’s and Ture-Pike’s, respectively), a linear one-variable model is employed to improve the accuracy of the EDR estimation. Two revised EDR estimation equations are developed in two cases: one includes and the other excludes the three humid watersheds on the basis of the original framework. The results show that the first revised equation may be applied to both humid and arid watersheds, whereas the second revised equation is more appropriate in calculating the EDR for arid watersheds.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2010CB951101), the Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (51190091), and the National Natural Science Foundations of China (Grant Nos. 41101016, 41101015). The authors are very grateful to the three anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to considerably improve the paper.
References
Arora, V. K. (2002). “The use of the aridity index to assess climate change effect on annual runoff.” J. Hydrol., 265(1–4), 164–177.
Bao, Z., et al. (2011). “Attribution for decreasing streamflow of the Haihe River basin, Northern China: Climate variability or human activities.” J. Hydrol., 460–462, 117–129.
Budyko, M. I. (1948). Evaporation under natural conditions, Israel Program for Scientific Translations, Jerusalem.
Budyko, M. I. (1974). Climate and life, English Ed., Academic, San Diego.
Donohue, R. J., and Roderick, M. J. (2010). “Can dynamic vegetation information improve the accuracy of Budyko’s hydrological model?” J. Hydrol., 390(1–2), 23–34.
Dooge, J. C. I., Bruen, M., and Parmentier, B. (1999). “A simple model for estimating the sensitivity of runoff to long-term changes in precipitation without a change in vegetation.” Adv. Water Resour., 23(2), 153–163.
Fu, B. (1981). “On the calculation of the evaporation from land surface.” Sci. Atmos. Sin., 5(1), 23–31 (in Chinese).
Fu, G., Chen, S., Liu, C., and Shepard, D. (2004). “Hydro-climatic trends of the Yellow River basin for the past 50 years.” Clim. Change, 65(1/2), 149–178.
Gong, D., Shi, P., and Wang, J. (2004). “Daily precipitation changes in the semi-arid region over northern China.” J. Arid. Environ., 59(4), 771–784.
Koster, R. D., and Suarez, M. J. (1999). “A simple framework for examining the interannual variability of land surface moisture fluxes.” J. Clim., 12(7), 1911–1917.
Legates, D. F., and McCabe, G. J. (1999). “Evaluating the use of ‘goodness-of-fit’ measures in hydrologic and hydro-climatic model validation.” Water Resour. Res., 35(1), 233–241.
Liu, C. M., and Cheng, L. (2000). “Analysis on runoff series with special reference to drying up courses of lower Huanghe river.” Acta Geogr. Sin., 55(3), 257–265 (in Chinese).
Liu, C. M., and Xia, J. (2004). “Water problems and hydrological research in the Yellow River and the Huai and Hai River basins of China.” Hydrol. Process, 18(12), 2197–2210.
Liu, Q., and Yang, Z. (2010). “Quantitative estimation of the impact of climate change on actual evapotranspiration in the Yellow River Basin, China.” J. Hydrol., 395(3–4), 226–234.
Milly, P. C. D. (1993). “An analytic solution of the stochastic storage problem applicable to soil water.” Water Resour. Res., 29(11), 3755–3758.
Milly, P. C. D., and Dunne, K. A. (2002). “Macroscale water fluxes. 2. Water and energy supply control of their interannual variability.” Water Resour. Res., 38(10), 24-1–24-9.
Narasimhan, B., and Srinivasan, R. (2005). “Development and evaluation of soil moisture deficit index (SMDI) and evapotranspiration deficit index (ETDI) for agricultural drought monitoring.” Agric. For. Meteorol., 133(1–4), 69–88.
Nash, J. E., and Sutcliffe, J. V. (1970). “River flow forecasting through conceptual models, part I—A discussion of principles.” J. Hydrol., 10(3), 282–290.
Ol’dekop, E. M. (1911). “On evaporation from the surface of river basins.” Trans. Meteorol. Observ. lur-evskogo, Univ. of Tartu, 4 (in Russian).
Pike, J. G. (1964). “The estimation of annual run-off from meteorological data in a tropical climate.” J. Hydrol., 2(2), 116–123.
Potter, N. J. (2006). “Statistical-dynamical modeling of catchment water balance: climatic and vegetation controls on hydrologic fluxes.” Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Potter, N. J., and Zhang, L. (2009). “Interannual variability of catchment water balance in Australia.” J. Hydrol., 369(1–2), 120–129.
Potter, N. J., Zhang, L., Milly, P. C. D., McMahon, T. A., and Jakeman, A. J. (2005). “Effects of rainfall seasonality and soil moisture capacity on mean annual water balance for Australian catchments.” Water Resour. Res., 41(6), W06007.
Roderick, M. L., and Farquhar, G. D. (2011). “A simple framework for relating variations in runoff to variations in climatic conditions and catchment properties.” Water Resour. Res., 47(12), W00G07.
Sankarasubramanian, A., and Vogel, R. M. (2002). “Annual hydroclimatology of the United States.” Water Resour. Res., 38(6), 19-1–19-12.
Sankarasubramanian, A., and Vogel, R. M. (2003). “Hydroclimatology of the continental United States.” Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(7), 1363.
Schreiber, P. (1904). “Ueber die Beziehungen zwischen dem Niederschlag under Wasserfvhrung der flvsse in Mitteleuropa.” Meteorol. Z., 21, 441–452.
Sun, F. (2007). “Study on watershed evapotranspiration based on the Budyko hypothesis.” Ph.D. thesis, Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (in Chinese).
Tekleab, S., Uhlenbrook, S., Mohamed, Y., Savenije, H. H. G., and Wenninger, J. (2011). “Water balance modeling of Upper Blue Nile catchments using a top-down approach.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 15(7), 2179–2193.
Turc, L. (1954). “Le bilan d’eau des sols. Relations entre les precipitations, l’evaporation et l’ecoulement.” Ann. Agronomy, 5, 491–596.
Xiong, L., and Guo, S. (2012). “Appraisal of Budyko formula in calculating long-term water balance in humid watersheds of Southern China.” Hydrol. Process., 26(9), 1370–1378.
Yang, D., Shao, W., Yeh, P., Yang, H., Kanae, S., and Oki, T. (2009). “Impact of vegetation coverage on regional water balance in the nonhumid regions of China.” Water Resour. Res., 45(7), W00A14.
Yang, D., Sun, F., Liu, Z., Cong, Z., and Lei, Z. (2006). “Interpreting the complementary relationship in non-humid environments based on the Budyko and Penman hypotheses.” Geophys. Res. Letters, 33(18), L18402.
Yang, D., Sun, F., Liu, Z., Cong, Z., Ni, G., and Lei, Z. (2007). “Analyzing spatial and temporal variability of annual water-energy balance in nonhumid regions of China using the Budyko hypothesis.” Water Resour. Res., 43(3), W04426.
Yang, H. (2007). “Derivation and application of the coupled water-energy balance equation.” Ph.D. thesis, Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (in Chinese).
Yang, H., Yang, D., Lei, Z., and Sun, F. (2008). “New analytical derivation of the mean annual water-energy balance equation.” Water Resour. Res., 44(3), W03410.
Zhang, L., Dawes, W. R., and Walker, G. R. (2001). “Response of mean annual evapotranspiration to vegetation changes at catchment scale.” Water Resour. Res., 37(3), 701–708.
Zhang, L., Hickel, K., Dawes, W. R., Chiew, F. H. S., Western, A. W., and Briggs, P. R. (2004). “A rational function approach for estimating mean annual evapotranspiration.” Water Resour. Res., 40(2), W02502.
Zhang, L., Potter, N., Hickel, K., Zhang, Y., and Shao, Q. (2008). “Water balance modeling over variable time scales based on the Budyko framework-Model development and testing.” J. Hydrol., 360(1–4), 117–131.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 7, 2012
Accepted: Jun 6, 2013
Published online: Jun 8, 2013
Discussion open until: Nov 8, 2013
Published in print: Apr 1, 2014
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.