Evaluation of the HYMOD model for rainfall–runoff simulation using the GLUE method

Abstract. The Yalong River is the third largest base of the 13 hydropower bases in China. Long-time series of river discharge records are essential for the design of hydropower stations and water resource management. The existing monitoring network is scarce and cannot provide sufficient hydrological information for the basin. Rainfall–runoff models are popular tools for extending hydrological data in both space and time. In this paper, the feasibility of applying a conceptual rainfall–runoff model, HYdrological MODel (HYMOD), to the upper Yalong River basin was evaluated. The generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) was employed for model calibration and uncertainty analysis. The results show that simulated discharge matches the observations satisfactorily, indicating the hydrological model performs well and the application of HYMOD to estimate long time-series of river discharge in the study area is feasible.