Water balance modeling of Upper Blue Nile catchments using a top-down approach

Abstract. The hydrological behavior and functioning of twenty catchments in the Upper Blue Nile basin have been analyzed using a top-down modeling approach that is based on Budyko's hypotheses. The objective is to obtain better understanding of catchment response for prediction in ungauged catchments. The water balance analysis using Budyko-type curve at annual scale reveals that the aridity index does not exert a first order control in most of the catchments. This implies the need to increase model complexity to a monthly time scale to include the effects of seasonal soil moisture dynamics. The dynamic water balance model used in this study predicts the direct runoff and other processes based on limit concept. The uncertainty of model parameters has been assessed using the GLUE (Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation). The results show that the majority of the parameters are reasonably well identifiable. Moreover, a multi-objective model calibration strategy has been employed within the GLUE framework to emphasize the different aspects of the hydrographs on low and high flows. The model has been calibrated and validated against observed streamflow time series and it shows good performance for the twenty catchments of the upper Blue Nile. During the calibration period (1995–2000) the Nash and Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency for monthly flow prediction varied between 0.52 to 0.93 during high flows, while it varied between 0.32 to 0.90 during low flows (logarithms of flow series). The model is parsimonious and it is suggested that the resulting parameters can be used to predict monthly stream flows in the ungauged catchments of the Upper Blue Nile basin, which accounts about 60% of total Nile basin flow.