Mohamed Ismaiel Ahmed, Tricia Stadnyk, Alain Pietroniro, Hervé Awoye, Ajay Bajracharya, Juliane Mai, Bryan Tolson, Hongren Shen, James Craig, Wouter Knoben, Martyn Clark, Hongli Liu, Shervan Gharari, Kristina Koenig, Shane Wruth, Phillip Slota, Mark Gervais, Kevin Sagan, Rajtantra Lilhare, Stephen Dery, Scott Pokorny, Hank Venema, Ameer Muhammad, Curtis Hallborg, Mahkameh Taheri (2022). Multi-model Intercomparison Project on the Saskatchewan-Nelson-Churchill River Basin (Nelson-MiP). Proceedings of the GWF Annual Open Science Meeting, May 16-18, 2022.

Hydrologic models have been utilized over the past few decades to understand and simulate the hydrologic cycle and predict various risks to the communities (floods or droughts) globally. However, running these models on large-scale domains with numerous managed and unmanaged lake/wetland systems (such as the complex prairie environment) might be problematic. This intercomparison study is the first of a series of studies under the intercomparison project of the international transboundary Nelson-Churchill River Basin (NCRB) in North America (Nelson-MiP), which encompasses major areas of the prairie region. In this intercomparison study, the performance of nine hydrologic and land surface models is compared at unregulated basins within NCRB to better identify a set of models that has realistic representation of the different hydrologic processes, which can be used to predict streamflow accurately, especially under future climate change in such complex environments. Results show that most of the participating models have significant discrepancies in simulating the streamflow and internal hydrologic variables (e.g., evapotranspiration and snow water equivalent) over prairie basins due to some model structural deficiencies. This study identifies the limitations across the participating models for future model structural improvements/developments. This study’s outcomes can help practitioners in accurately predicting the NCRB streamflow, which is crucial for better water resource management and allocation over that basin.

AOSM2022 IMPC First Author: Mohamed Ismaiel Ahmed, Postdoctoral associate Additional Authors: Tricia Stadnyk, Alain Pietroniro, Hervé Awoye, Ajay Bajracharya, Juliane Mai, Bryan Tolson, Hongren Shen, James Craig, Wouter Knoben, Martyn Clark, Hongli Liu, Shervan Gharari, Kristina Koenig, Shane Wruth, Phillip Slota, Mark Gervais, Kevin Sagan, Rajtantra Lilhare, Stephen Dery, Scott Pokorny, Hank Venema, Ameer Muhammad, Curtis Hallborg, Mahkameh Taheri