Hydrological performance of the ERA5 reanalysis for flood modeling in Tunisia with the LISFLOOD and GR4J models

• DOI: 10.1016/j.ejrh.2022.101169
• Publication Date: 2022-07-09T00:53:11Z
• Authors: Elia Cantoni; Yves Tramblay; Stefania Grimaldi; Peter Salamon; Hamouda Dakhlaoui; Alain Dezetter; Vera Thiemig
• Keywords: Hydrological modelling

This study is focused on 6 catchments in Tunisia, North Africa, under a semi-arid climate where daily river discharge and precipitation observations are available between 1992 2006. The distributed hydrological model LISFLOOD has been compared with lumped model, GR4J, to reproduce runoff floods, using observed rainfall interpolated from rain gauges the ERA5 reanalysis. GR4J their default parameters have little skill but when calibrated, both models provide similar performance discharge, mean KGE of 0.65 for driven by rainfall, 0.59 ERA5, similarly 0.48 ERA5. All simulations perform very either data over basins or indicating its value as an alternative data-scarce areas such Tunisia. development regional databases Africa could allow calibration larger scale operational flood modeling forecasting.