Climate Normalized Spatial Patterns of Evapotranspiration Enhance the Calibration of a Hydrological Model
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Based on my assessment, the manuscript requires Major Revision and cannot be recommended for publication in its current form in “Remote Sensing”. I believe that after duly addressing the comments authors can improve the quality of the manuscript substantially to make it more insightful.
Please find the attachment for the comments.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please find my replies in the attached document.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
I have a couple of concerns with the presented methodology that should be addressed. There are several issues. I would like to discuss with the authors:
- Past investigations have demonstrated that model structure uncertainty has a great impact on hydrologic predictions. How do the precipitation uncertainties behave or affect the hydrologic model structure?
- For example, if the hydrologic model runs at the 24-hour resolution, and it has not been calibrated with precipitation products at a 3-hour resolution, then we can have unexpected effects on the generated discharge. In this case, I am not able to say a-priori what we should expect. Thus, the biases that the authors have found may be an effect of the calibrated parameters, rather than the model structure. I suggest the authors elaborate more. You need to explain clearly how did you calibrate the model?
- Can you provide a high impactful schematic diagram to understand the proposed calibration framework where the big impact of the results can be presented?
- How does the precipitation uncertainty propagate through the hydrologic simulations? What is the relative importance of precipitation vs. modeling uncertainty on the simulation of key water cycle variables (streamflow and ET)?
You can follow the latest research results and include the insight in your study:
Dion, Patrice, Jean-Luc Martel, and Richard Arsenault. "Hydrological ensemble forecasting using a multi-model framework." Journal of Hydrology 600 (2021): 126537.
Ehsan Bhuiyan, M. A., Nikolopoulos, E. I., Anagnostou, E. N., Polcher, J., Albergel, C., Dutra, E., Fink, G., Martínez-de la Torre, A., and Munier, S.: Assessment of precipitation error propagation in multi-model global water resource reanalysis, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 1973–1994,
- No seasonal analysis is performed. Can you show few results?
- The authors should provide in the Methodology section three details on the hydrologic simulations and their evaluation:
- What is the time resolution adopted for the hydrologic model?
- Which set of parameters was used to calibrate the model? Provide a table with source, resolution, etc.
- (iii) State that: (i) simulations are evaluated for long-term averages of annual, daily, and, in some cases,
Author Response
Please find my replies in the attached document.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This article aims to propose using climate normalized spatial patterns of evapotranspiration to enhance the evaluation of hydrological models. The article has an interesting topic and is well-written. There are some issues that need revision:
1) Title: Looking at the title, I thought the authors aim to propose a method to enhance the hydrological model performance. However, using the term "enhance evaluation of hydrological models" may not give that impression. I suggest exploring and seeing if the title can be revised in a way to better reflect the findings of the work.
2- Figure 1: Please add the North direction to the map. Also, some improvements are needed to the quality of the image.
3- In section 2.5, it is recommended to add some explanations on the desired range of parameters KGE and SPAEF.
4- Line 234-235. Justifications are needed why such a polynomial function is chosen.
5- Fig 2-d: It is good to add a fitness parameter such as R^2, to showcase the goodness-of-fitness.
6- Fig5: Using "score" as the label of the vertical axis may become confusing. Perhaps it is better to find a better choice.
7- Figure 8: It is hard to seeCal1 and Cal2 results on the graphs.
Also for the vertical axis, it is better to Q as the label and also to provide correct formatting for its unit.
8- It is recommended to add a section in the discussion part to highlight the limitations of this study.
9- The conclusion is more like a summary. It is suggested to put more emphasis on the key findings also.
Author Response
Please find my replies in the attached document.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors significantly improved the quality of the paper by addressing most of the previous comments. This research work will be very effective for the water research community. I recommend the manuscript for publication!
