Journal of Hydrology (2008) 360, 117– 131

available at www.sciencedirect.com

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol

Water balance modeling over variable time scales

based on the Budyko framework – Model
development and testing
a,*
Lu Zhang , Nick Potter a, Klaus Hickel a, Yongqiang Zhang a, Quanxi Shao b

a
CSIRO Land and Water, G.P.O. Box 1666, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
b
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Private Bag No. 5, Wembley, WA 6913, Australia

Received 22 December 2007; received in revised form 27 June 2008; accepted 11 July 2008

KEYWORDS Summary Partitioning of precipitation into evapotranspiration and runoff is controlled

Water balance; by climate and catchment characteristics. The degree of control exerted by these factors
Evapotranspiration; varies with the spatial and temporal scales of processes modeled. The Budyko framework
Ungauged catchments; or the ‘‘limits’’ concept was used to model water balance at four temporal scales (mean
Budyko framework annual, annual, monthly and daily). The method represents a top-down approach to
hydrologic modeling and is expected to achieve parsimony of model parameters. Daily
precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, and streamflow from 265 catchments in Aus-
tralia were used. On a mean annual basis, the index of dryness defined as the ratio of
potential evapotranspiration to precipitation was confirmed to be a dominant factor in
determining the water balance with one model parameter. Analysis of the data, however,
suggested increased model complexity is necessary on finer time scale such as monthly. In
response, the Budyko framework for mean annual water balance was extended to include
additional factors and this resulted in a parsimonious lumped conceptual model on
shorter-time scale. The model was calibrated and tested against measured streamflow
at variable time scales and showed promising results. The strengths of the model are con-
sistent water balance relationships across different time scales, and model parsimony and
robustness. As result, the model has the potential to be used to predict streamflow for
ungauged catchments.
Crown Copyright ª 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: lu.zhang@csiro.au (L. Zhang).

0022-1694/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright ª 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2008.07.021
118
Introduction
The movement of water through the continuum of soil, veg-
etation, and atmosphere is an important process. Under-
standing the water balance in relation to climate and
catchment characteristics provides insight into the complex
processes operating over a range of spatial and temporal
scales. At the catchment scale, quantifying the effects of
land-use change on water balance and prediction of stream-
flow in ungauged catchments are the major scientific chal-
lenges for hydrologists (Zhang et al., 2004; PUB initiative).
While there have been major advances in our knowledge
of the physical and biophysical processes controlling the
water balance, it remains a difficult task to develop models
that can be used to make quantitative hydrological predic-
tions at catchment scale. This is partly due to the fact that
for such a model to be of practical use it must meet the
requirements of parsimony in terms of data inputs and mod-
el parameters. This requires inevitably that the model is
sufficiently simple and that parameters can be estimated
from known climate and catchment characteristics.
In an attempt to understand relationships between water
balance and climate, Budyko (1958) postulated that long-
term average annual evapotranspiration from a catchment
is determined by rainfall and available energy. Based on this
assumption, Budyko derived a simple water balance model
known as Budyko’s curve that showed good agreement with
the long-term water balance data for a number of catch-
ments in the former USSR. The work of Budyko has led to
more theoretical studies trying to understand how climatic
and catchment characteristics affecting equilibrium or
long-term average water balance (Milly, 1994; Koster and
Suarez, 1999; Choudhury, 1999; Zhang et al., 2001, 2004;
Farmer et al., 2003; Raupach et al., 2001; Atkinson et al.,
2002; Potter et al., 2005). The importance of these studies
is that they showed a hierarchy of control exerted by cli-
mate and catchment characteristics on water balance over
various temporal scales. At mean annual scale, climatic fac-
tors such as precipitation and potential evapotranspiration
are the main control on water balance and inclusion of these
two factors may be sufficient for many purposes (Budyko,
1958). These studies also demonstrated clearly the scien-
tific merits and practical benefits of the method developed
by Budyko (1958), which is an example of a top-down ap-
proach (Sivapalan et al., 2003). The main feature of the
top-down approach is its empirical nature, seeking an
understanding of overall catchment behavior and function
based on observed data. In the top-down approach, one
starts from exploring first-order controls in catchment
water balance, and model complexity is increased only
when deficiencies are identified. This means that when a fi-
ner time scale is of interest, one may have to include addi-
tional factors such as rainfall seasonality and catchment
water storage capacity into the water balance model. It is
equally important that the complexity of the model is sup-
ported by available data. To meet the challenge of predic-
tions for ungauged catchments, knowledge of model
parameters in relation to climate and catchment character-
istics is essential.
This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the
controls exerted by climatic and catchment characteristics
L. Zhang et al.
on water balance over variable time scales. Specifically,
the paper presents water balance modeling over timescales
ranging from mean annual to daily based on Budyko’s frame-
work. This method could be considered as a holistic or sys-
tems approach to catchment water balance modeling. It
enables the development of water balance models with con-
sistency in process representation and parsimony of model
parameters, making them suitable for application to unga-
uged catchments and for predicting land-use change im-
pacts. The paper begins with a brief description of the
catchments and data used in this study. The next section
presents the development of the variable timescale water
balance models and their calibration. Finally, results of
the model calibration and testing are discussed.
Catchment description and data
The catchments included in this study have at least five
complete years of unimpaired daily streamflow data and a
catchment area between 50 and 2000 km2. Unimpaired
streamflow is defined as streamflow that is not subject to
regulation or diversion. The streamflow data was assembled
by Peel et al. (2000). In total, 265 catchments were
available.
Monthly rainfall was estimated from gridded daily rainfall
(Peel et al., 2000). The spatial resolution of the gridded dai-
ly rainfall is 5 km by 5 km based on interpolation of over
6000 rainfall stations in Australia. The interpolation uses
monthly rainfall data, ordinary Kriging with zero nugget
and a variable range. Monthly rainfall for each point is con-
verted to daily rainfall using the daily rainfall distribution
from the station closest to that point. Catchment averaged
rainfall was estimated from the daily rainfall. Mean daily
potential evapotranspiration was calculated based on the
Priestley–Taylor equation (Priestley and Taylor, 1972). De-
tails of the calculation can be found in Raupach et al.
(2001).
Potter et al. (2005) and Hickel et al. (2006) showed that
rainfall seasonality is important for the water balance of
Australian catchments. A distinction was made between
catchments with different seasonal distributions of rainfall.
A sine curve was fitted to monthly means of rainfall and po-
tential evapotranspiration and the phase shift between the
rainfall and potential evapotranspiration curves was calcu-
lated. The amplitude of the sine curve indicates the
strength of rainfall seasonality. A phase shift of 6–8 months
indicates a winter-dominant rainfall regime and summer-
dominant regime has a phase shift of – 1 to 3 months. If
the amplitude of rainfall divided by mean annual rainfall
is small (<0.2), a non-seasonal rainfall regime is assumed.
The catchments selected in this study cover large geo-
graphic regions and span a variety of climates including
tropical, dry, and warm temperate. Mean annual precipita-
tion from the catchments varies from 282 to 2886 mm with
different seasonal distributions. The mean annual potential
evapotranspiration ranges from 785 to 2095 mm. The vege-
tation in the catchments includes native woodlands, open
forests, rainforests, eucalyptus, various species of pine
trees, native and managed grass, and agricultural crops.
The catchments cover soil types from sand through loams
to clays with large differences in soil properties such as sat-
Water balance modeling over variable time scales based on the Budyko framework – Model development and testing 119
urated hydraulic conductivity and water holding capacity.
Runoff ratio of the catchments ranges from 0.01 to 0.65,
representing diverse hydrological conditions.
Water balance modeling over variable time
scale
Equilibrium water balance model
The dynamic water balance of a catchment can be written as
d and 1 and an increase in a corresponds with an increase in
Sc ðtÞ ¼ PðtÞ  ETðSc ; tÞ  Q ðSc ; tÞ ð1Þ
dt
where Sc(t) is the total stored water in the catchment, and
P(t), ET(Sc,t), Q(Sc,t) are precipitation, evapotranspiration,
and total runoff, respectively.When Eq. (1) is integrated
over a time interval T, one obtains
Sc ðTÞ  Sc ð0Þ
¼ P  ET  Q ð2Þ
T better model for estimating mean annual evapotranspira-
where P, E, Q are time-averaged water fluxes given by
Z Z
1 T 1 T
P¼ PðtÞdt; ET ¼ ETðSc ; tÞdt;
T 0 T 0
Z T
1 Q ¼ P 1a þ E 01a
Q¼ Q ðSc ; tÞdt ð3Þ
T 0
The left-hand side of Eq. (2) accounts for the effect of
water storage changes in the time-averaged water balance
and decreases relative to the right hand side as T increases.
If T is long enough, e.g. decades, the storage terms can be
neglected relative to the fluxes and Eq. (2) becomes
0 ¼ P  ET  Q ð4Þ
which can be thought as the ‘‘equilibrium’’ or ‘‘steady-
state’’ water balance.
The evaluation of the water balance equation requires
extra information such as catchment physical characteris-
tics, climatic variables, and further relationships. In the
case of dynamic water balance models, the extra informa-
tion may include equations for estimating evapotranspira-
tion and groundwater recharge. Such models are
generally complicated with a large number of parameters
(Walker and Zhang, 2002). The models for the equilibrium
water balance are much simpler, but can provide useful in-
sight into the key processes responsible and they are gen-
erally robust.
Budyko’s framework
The mean annual water balance can be modeled using the
method of Budyko (1958) by only considering dominant con-
trols on evapotranspiration. It is a holistic approach that as-
sumes the equilibrium water balance is controlled by water
availability and atmospheric demand. The water availability
can be approximated by precipitation, the atmospheric de-
mand represents the maximum possible evapotranspiration
and is often equated with potential evapotranspiration.
Milly (1993, 1994) and Zhang et al. (2001) further developed
the Budyko framework by introducing additional controls
such as rainfall seasonality and vegetation characteristics.
A similar method for modeling evapotranspiration has been
proposed based on the ‘‘limits’’ concept (Calder, 1998).
Based on phenomenological considerations, Fu (1981) devel-
oped the following relationships for estimating mean annual
evapotranspiration:
  w 1=w
ET E0 E0
¼1þ  1þ ð5Þ
P P P
where E0 is potential evapotranspiration, w is a model
parameter with range (1,1). For the purpose of model cal-
ibration, we define a ¼ 1–1=w so that a varies between 0
evapotranspiration efficiency. The relationship represented
by Eq. (5) is shown in Fig. 1 and details of the solutions are
given in Zhang et al. (2004).
The method of Fu (1981) is similar to Budyko (1958) in
assuming that the equilibrium water balance is controlled
by water availability and atmospheric demand. Zhang et
al. (2004) argued that Eq. (5) has a physical basis and is a
tion compared with other similar empirical equations.
By combining Eqs. (4) and (5), one obtains the following
expression for mean annual streamflow:
 1 1
1a
 E0 ð6Þ
Eq. (6) can be used to calculate mean annual stream-
flow when mean annual values of rainfall and potential
evapotranspiration are known. A comparison of observed
and calculated mean annual streamflow and runoff ratios
for the 265 catchments is shown in Fig. 2. In the calcula-
tion, a single value of 0.64 was used for the a parameter
and it resulted in a mean absolute error (MAE) of 44 mm
and the coefficient of efficiency of 0.93. Potter et al.
(2005) showed that while Eq. (5) with a single a value pre-
dicts overall mean annual evapotranspiration ratio well,
calibrated values of the a parameter vary with rainfall
seasonality.
Interannual variability in water balance
In moving from mean annual to shorter-time scale, i.e.
decreasing T, one generally has to account for the effect
of catchment water storage change on the water balance.
Koster and Suarez (1999) assumed that interannual changes
in catchment water storage are much smaller than the an-
nual precipitation, evaporation, and runoff. As a result,
they suggested that the evaporation ratio for any one
catchment in a given year i can be modeled using Bud-
yko-like curves:
    
ET E0
¼F ;a ð7Þ
P i P i
where F() is Eq. (5). Based on the above relationship and by
further assuming negligible interannual variations in poten-
tial evapotranspiration, Koster and Suarez (1999) showed
that the ratio of the standard deviation of annual evapora-
tion to that of annual precipitation can be approximated
as a function of index of dryness (U ¼ E 0 =P):
rET
¼ FðU; aÞ  UF 0 ðU; aÞ ð8Þ
rP
120 L. Zhang et al.

1.0 α = 0.80
α = 0.60

α = 0.50

0.8

α =0.33

0.6
E/P
α = 0.23

0.4

0.2 α = 0.09

0.0
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0
Eo/P

Figure 1 Ratio of mean annual evapotranspiration to rainfall (E/P) as a function of the index of dryness (E0/P) for different values
of parameter.

1600 which is called evaporation deviation ratio, U is the index

of dryness. Large values of this ratio indicate that most of
precipitation variability becomes evapotranspiration vari-
1200 ability, whereas small values mean that evapotranspiration
variability is largely insensitive to variability in precipita-
Predicted Q (mm)

tion. From this relationship, Koster and Suarez (1999) con-

cluded that the ratio of the standard deviation of annual
800
streamflow to the standard deviation of annual precipita-
tion can also be expressed as

400 rQ rET
¼1 ð9Þ
rP rP
It should be noted that Eq. (9) was obtained from the
0 relationship: DP ¼ DQ þ DET: However, this is also depen-
0 400 800 1200 1600 dent on the assumption that annual evapotranspiration
Observed Q (mm) anomalies are fixed proportions of annual precipitation
anomalies. This equation can be used to describe interan-
0.8 nual variability of streamflow (Sankarasubramanian and Vo-
gel, 2002). One can also estimate annual streamflow from
Eq. (10) in analogy to Eq. (6) by ignoring interannual water
storage change:
0.6
 1 1
1a
Predicted Q/P

Q i ¼ P 1a
i þ E 0i
1a
 E 0i ð10Þ
0.4 Fig. 3 compares the observed and predicted values of
interannual variability of streamflow using Eq. (9) for all
the catchments with a constant value of 2.63 for a based
0.2 on Zhang et al. (2004). The coefficient of efficiency for
interannual streamflow variability is 0.87 and the mean
absolute error (MAE) is 22 mm. Over 61% of the catchments
0.0 have streamflow variability, defined as standard deviation in
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 annual streamflow, less than half of the average annual
Observed Q/P streamflow (i.e. 100 mm) and a few catchments showed
large variability of more than 400 mm (see Fig. 3). These re-
Figure 2 Comparison of observed and predicted (a) mean sults are consistent with the findings of Sankarasubramanian
annual streamflow and (b) runoff ratio for all the catchments. and Vogel (2002) for catchments in the US and Arora (2002)
Water balance modeling over variable time scales based on the Budyko framework – Model development and testing 121

1.0 600
Streamflow deviation ratio (σQ/σP)

143110
0.8

Observed streamflow [mm]

0.6 400

0.4

200
0.2

0.0
00 .5 11 .5 22 .5 3
Mean index of dryness (E0/P) 0
0 200 400 600
600
Predicted streamflow [mm]
Predicted streamflow variability (mm)

500 600

400 405228

300 Observed streamflow [mm] 400

200

100
200

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600
Observed streamflow variability (mm)
0
Figure 3 Comparison of observed and predicted streamflow 0 200 400 600
deviation ratio (a) and interannual streamflow variability Predicted streamflow [mm]
calculated as standard deviation in annual streamflow (b).
800

for GCM simulations. The advantage of the method devel- 318900

Observed streamflow [mm]

oped by Koster and Suarez (1999) is that the interannual var- 600
iability in streamflow can be calculated from a simple
relationship using the index of dryness. The scatter in the
results may be mainly due to rainfall seasonality and the
omission of interannual storage variations. It has been sug- 400
gested that inclusion of a soil-moisture index can improve
the model predictions (Sankarasubramanian and Vogel,
2002, 2003). 200
The equilibrium water balance model with annual time
step works reasonably well for three selected catchments
representing different rainfall regimes (see Fig. 4) and this
indicates that the storage effect can be neglected in these 0
catchments. The model was also applied to all the catch- 0 200 400 600 800
ments to test its general applicability and the results are Predicted streamflow [mm]
summarized in Fig. 5. It can be seen that the model works
Figure 4 Comparisons of predicted and observed annual
well for most of the catchments with 90% of them having
streamflow for selected catchments, representing summer-
values of the coefficient of efficiency greater than 0.5 and
dominant rainfall (a), winter-dominant rainfall (b), and non-
less than 3% of the catchments have bias values greater than
seasonal rainfall (c).
10%. The bias in the estimated annual streamflow is within
5% for 85% of the catchments. However, there are some can not be neglected on annual time scale and more com-
catchments where the model performed poorly and this plex models are required to accurately simulate water bal-
may indicate that the impact of catchment water storage ance for these catchments.
122 L. Zhang et al.

15

10

Bias (%)
0

-5

-10

-15
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage of catchments where bias value exceeded

1.0

0.8
Coefficient of Efficiency (E)

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage of catchments where E value exceeded

Figure 5 Summary of model calibration for annual streamflow. (a) Percentage of catchments where bias value exceeded, (b)
percentage of catchments with E value greater than or equal to a given E value.

Dynamic water balance models
Changing from annual to shorter-time scales, such as
monthly or daily, it is expected that the effect of catchment
water storage on the water balance will become even more
significant. As a result, variations in rainfall, potential
evapotranspiration, and water storage need to be consid-
ered. To test if the annual water balance equation repre-
sented by Eq. (10) is capable of accurately simulating
monthly streamflow and to identify any potential deficiency
in the model, Eq. (10) was next applied with monthly cli-
mate data and the results are shown in Fig. 6 for three se-
lected catchments representing different rainfall regimes.
It is clear that the annual water balance model represented
by Eq. (10) is not able to accurately simulate monthly
streamflow. The predicted streamflow is overly sensitive
to rainfall with sharp rises and falls in the hydrographs. As
a result, the model over-predicted streamflow due to a lack
of storage control and slow release processes. The results
shown in Fig. 6 suggest that additional processes have to
be incorporated in order to simulate the observed monthly
streamflow, especially a slow flow component and it calls
for an increase in model complexity. Here the method of
Budyko (1958) for modeling mean annual evapotranspiration
is generalized as a demand and supply framework. The goal
is to develop a dynamic water balance model for sub-annual
time scales using the demand and supply framework, or the
‘‘limits’’ concept (Calder, 1998) by appropriately defining
new state variables and fluxes.
The catchment is conceptualized as a system of two sto-
rages: root zone storage and groundwater storage. For the
catchment water balance, it is assumed that rainfall P(t)
in time step t will be partitioned into direct runoff Qd(t)
and the sum of the other water balance components:
PðtÞ ¼ Q d ðtÞ þ XðtÞ ð11Þ
where X(t) is called catchment rainfall retention and is the
amount of rainfall retained by the catchment for evapo-
transpiration ET(t), change in soil-moisture storage
S(t)  S(t  1) and recharge R(t).
The demand limit for X(t) is the sum of available storage
capacity (Smax  S(t  1)) and potential evapotranspiration
Water balance modeling over variable time scales based on the Budyko framework – Model development and testing 123

600 500 0
143110

400
Observed streamflow (mm)

200
400

Precipitation (mm)
Streamflow (mm)
300

400

200
200

600
100

0
0 200 400 600 0 800
Simulated streamflow (mm) 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984
Time

200 300 0
405228

150
Observed streamflow (mm)

200 200

Precipitation (mm)
Streamflow (mm)

100

100 400
50

0
0 50 100 150 200 0 600
Simulated streamflow (mm) 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983
Time

300 400 0
318900

250
Observed streamflow (mm)

300 200
200

Precipitation (mm)
Streamflow (mm)

150
200 400

100

50 100 600

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
0 800
Simulated streamflow (mm)
1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
Time

Figure 6 (a) Scatter plots of observed and simulated monthly streamflow for the whole period of records using Eq. (10) for three
selected catchments representing summer-dominant rainfall (143110), winter-dominant rainfall (405228), and uniform rainfall
regime (318900); (b) time series of observed ( ) and simulated (ÆÆÆÆÆ) monthly streamflow of 10 year windows for the same
catchments. Also shown is monthly rainfall distribution.

 
(E0(t)) and is denoted as X0(t), while the supply limit can be X 0 ðtÞ
XðtÞ ¼ PðtÞF ; a1 ð14Þ
considered as rainfall P(t). Following a similar argument to PðtÞ
Budyko (1958), we can postulate that:
XðtÞ=PðtÞ ! 1 as X 0 ðtÞ=PðtÞ ! 1ðvery dry conditionsÞð12Þ where F() is Fu’s curve – Eq. (5), a1 is retention efficiency,
XðtÞ ! X 0 ðtÞ as X 0 ðtÞ=PðtÞ ! 0ðvery wet conditionsÞ ð13Þ i.e., a larger a1 value will result in more rainfall retention
and less direct runoff. The ratio X0(t)/P(t) in Eq. (14) is anal-
Note that these are analogous to the supply and demand ogous to Budyko’s dryness index (Fig. 1). It can be consid-
limits (i.e. dashed lines) in Fig. 1. The catchment rainfall ered as a demand/supply index for the partition of P.
retention X(t) can be calculated as From Eqs. (11) and (14), direct runoff is calculated as
124 L. Zhang et al.

Q d ðtÞ ¼ PðtÞ  XðtÞ ð15Þ where a2 is a model parameter, representing evapotranspi-

ration efficiency. It should be noted that Eq. (22) is identical
At sub-annual time scales, water availability W(t) can be
to Fu’s curve except that rainfall has been replaced with the
defined as
available water W(t), which takes into consideration of the
WðtÞ ¼ XðtÞ þ Sðt  1Þ ð16Þ effect of catchment water storage.
Combining the definition of X(t) with Eq. (16), one It can be noted that Eq. (21) shares a common model
obtains parameter a2 with Eq. (22) and this is because groundwater
recharge is essentially determined by evapotranspiration
WðtÞ ¼ ETðtÞ þ SðtÞ þ RðtÞ ð17Þ efficiency. That is, as evapotranspiration efficiency is great-
While Eq. (16) defines the source of the water availabil- er (e.g. larger values of a2), recharge is diminished. Soil
ity, Eq. (17) determines the partitioning. Next define evapo- water storage can now be calculated as
transpiration opportunity (Sankarasubramanian and Vogel, SðtÞ ¼ YðtÞ  ETðtÞ ð23Þ
2002) as YðtÞ ¼ ETðtÞ þ SðtÞ, we obtain:
Note also that the parameter in Eqs. (21) and (22) must be
WðtÞ ¼ YðtÞ þ RðtÞ ð18Þ identical to ensure that catchment water storage S(t) re-
The demand limit for Y(t) can be considered as the sum mains between 0 and Smax.
of potential evapotranspiration (E0(t)) and soil water stor- Finally, groundwater storage is treated as a linear reser-
age capacity (Smax) and is denoted as Y0(t), while the supply voir, so that the groundwater balance and baseflow can be
limit is the available water W(t). Similar to Budyko (1958), modeled as
we can postulate that:
Q b ðtÞ ¼ dGðt  1Þ ð24Þ
YðtÞ=WðtÞ ! 1as Y 0 ðtÞ=WðtÞ ! 1ðvery dry conditionsÞ
GðtÞ ¼ ð1  dÞGðt  1Þ þ RðtÞ ð25Þ
ð19Þ
YðtÞ ! Y 0 ðtÞ as Y 0 ðtÞ=WðtÞ ! 0ðvery wet conditionsÞ where Qb is baseflow, G is groundwater storage, and d is a
ð20Þ constant. Eq. (24) represents a linear storage–discharge
relationship and constant d is a model parameter. A sche-
The evapotranspiration opportunity Y(t) can be esti- matic diagram of the dynamic water balance model with
mated from the following relationship: limits demand and supply is shown in Fig. 7.
 
E 0 ðtÞ þ Smax
YðtÞ ¼ WðtÞF ; a2 ð21Þ
WðtÞ Model calibration and validation
Thus groundwater recharge R(t) can be calculated from
The dynamic water balance model described above has
Eq. (18). The next step is to calculate evapotranspiration
four parameters a1, a2, d, and Smax. Application of this
ET(t). The demand limit for ET(t) can be considered as po-
model requires estimates of these parameters and the
tential evapotranspiration E0(t) and the supply limit is the
model was calibrated against recorded streamflow at both
available water W(t). Similar to Budyko (1958), evapotrans-
daily and monthly time scales. The split-sample test was
piration ET(t) can be calculated as
  applied where the observed streamflow was divided into
E 0 ðtÞ two roughly equal parts for calibration and validation
ETðtÞ ¼ WðtÞF ; a2 ð22Þ
WðtÞ (Refsgaard and Knudse, 1996).

Qd(t)/P(t) R(t)/W(t)
Partition of water availability
Partition of rainfall

S(t)/W(t)

Y(t)/W(t)
X(t)/P(t) ET(t)/W(t)

X0(t)/P(t) Demand/supply index E0(t)/W(t) (E0(t)+Smax)/W(t) Demand/supply index

Figure 7 A schematic diagram of the dynamic water balance model. Left: Partitioning of rainfall P(t) into catchment rainfall
retention X(t) and direct runoff Qd(t). The demand and supply limits are shown as dashed lines. Right: Partitioning of water
availability W(t) into evapotranspiration ET(t), storage S(t) and recharge R(t). The demand/supply index for evapotranspiration
opportunity Y(t) is (E0(t) + Smax)/W(t), where E0(t) is potential evapotranspiration. The demand/supply index for evapotranspiration
is E0(t)/W(t).
Water balance modeling over variable time scales based on the Budyko framework – Model development and testing 125
Pn
A generalised pattern search method was applied for ðQ sim;i  Q obs;i Þ2
parameter optimization (TheMathWorksInc., 2006). Four ba- F 2 ¼ Pi¼1
n 2
ð27Þ
i¼1 ðQ obs;i  Q obs 
sic objective functions are considered in this study:
Pn Pn
½lnðQ sim;i Þ  lnðQ obs;i Þ2 i¼1 ðQ sim;i  Q sim ÞðQ obs;i  Q obs Þ
F 1 ¼ Pi¼1 ð26Þ F 3 ¼ 1  qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Pn ffi ð28Þ
n 2 2 Pn 2
i¼1 ½lnðQ obs;i Þ  lnðQ obs Þ i¼1 ðQ sim;i  Q sim Þ i¼1 ðQ obs;i  Q obs Þ

500
600
143110 observed simulated
143110

400
Observed streamflow (mm)

400

Streamflow (mm)
300

200
200

100

0
0 200 400 600 0
Simulated streamflow (mm) 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984

200 150
405228 405228 observed simulated

150
Observed streamflow (mm)

100
Streamflow (mm)

100

50
50

0
0 50 100 150 200 0
Simulated streamflow (mm) 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983

300 400
318900 observed simulated
318900
250
Observed streamflow (mm)

300
200
Streamflow (mm)

150
200

100

50 100

0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
Simulated streamflow (mm) 0
1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993

Figure 8 (a) Scatter plots of observed and simulated monthly streamflow for the whole period of records using the dynamic water
balance model for three selected catchments representing summer-dominant rainfall (143110), winter-dominant rainfall (405228),
and uniform rainfall regime (318900); (b) time series of observed and simulated monthly streamflow of 10 year windows for the same
catchments.
126
Pn !
i¼1 Q sim;i
F 4 ¼ ln Pn
i¼1 Q obs;i
where Qsim,i is the simulated streamflow at time i, Qobs,i is
the observed streamflow at time i, n is the number of time
steps in the calibration period. F1 uses a logarithmic func-
tion and weights the error in low flows more than the errors
in the high flows. F2 was selected to place emphasis on the
errors in high flows. F3 describes the time shift between the
simulated and observed streamflow. F4 was selected to en-
sure mass balance over the period of the calibration. Final-
ly, the average of these four objective functions was used as
the objective function to be optimized.
Results and discussion
One of the objectives of this study was to demonstrate how
dynamic water balance can be modeled based on the top-
down approach by extending the Budyko framework or the
‘‘limits’’ concept (Calder, 1998). This method can be con-
L. Zhang et al.
sidered as a holistic or systems approach to catchment
ð29Þ water balance modeling and it is expected to achieve parsi-
mony of model parameters. A number of studies concluded
that water balance models with three to five parameters are
generally capable of accurately simulating monthly stream-
flow for humid regions (Xu and Singh, 1998; Vandewiele and
Ni-Lar-Win, 1998). However, the prospect of these models
for arid areas is less encouraging (Xu and Singh, 1998). This
can be chiefly attributed to extremely high temporal and
spatial variability in rainfall and occurrence of Hortonian
runoff in arid areas, particularly for summer-dominant rain-
fall regimes (Potter et al., 2005).
The main differences among various water balance mod-
els pertain to the treatment of evapotranspiration, runoff
generation, and groundwater recharge. The water balance
model developed in this study has several new features.
At monthly time step, most water balance models assume
that evapotranspiration is equal to potential evapotranspi-
ration when rainfall is greater than potential evapotranspi-
ration (Thornthwaite and Mather, 1955; Wolock and
McCabe, 1999). Given that rainfall and potential evapo-

1.0

0.8
Coefficient of Efficiency (E)

0.6

0.4

0.2 Calibration
Validation

0.0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage of catchments where E value exceeded

0.25
winter-dominant
non-seasonal
0.20 summer-dominant
Frequency [-]

0.15

0.10

0.05

0.00
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Coefficient of Efficiency

Figure 9 Percentage of catchments where E values greater than or equal to a given E value (a) and distribution of E values across
three different rainfall regimes (b) at monthly time step.
Water balance modeling over variable time scales based on the Budyko framework – Model development and testing 127

transpiration vary within a month, there exist periods of
deficit and surplus. As a result, this assumption may lead
to overestimation of evapotranspiration. On the other hand,
when rainfall is less than potential evapotranspiration,
evapotranspiration is generally modeled as a ‘‘ramp’’ func-
tion of soil moisture and various relationships have been
developed (Potter, 2006). A common feature of these rela-
tionships is the specification of the critical soil-moisture
content, defined as the level of soil moisture below which
capillary tension restricts actual evapotranspiration to be
less than potential evapotranspiration. The critical soil-
moisture content varies considerably with climate, soil,
and vegetation.
Evapotranspiration is treated differently in this study. It
is modeled using a method similar to that of Budyko (1958)
for mean annual evapotranspiration. The model assumes
evapotranspiration will always be less than the potential
evapotranspiration, except for the case when a2 ! 1. A lar-
ger a2 value indicates higher evapotranspiration efficiency.
Sensitivity analyses performed by Zhang et al. (2004)

Figure 10 Comparison of observed and simulated daily flow duration curves in the selected catchments for the calibration period
(a–c) and validation period (d–f).
128 L. Zhang et al.

suggest that a 11% increase in parameter a2 (which is equiv-
alent to a 20% increase in parameter w) results in about a
10% increase in mean annual evapotranspiration for typical
fitted values of parameter a2.
Another feature of the model developed in this study is
the estimation of runoff and groundwater recharge. It as-
sumes that direct runoff and recharge can occur even when
the soil is not saturated and it represents an improvement of
the models based on the threshold concept that runoff or
recharge does not occur until soil-moisture capacity is filled
(Alley, 1984). This is important for modeling water balance
in arid regions such as some of the catchments selected in
this study. The treatment of recharge in the dynamic water
balance model is comparable to that of the abcd model
(Alley, 1984), but the relationships between evapotranspira-
tion and soil-moisture content are treated differently and
the model allows both linear and non-linear relationships
to be modeled.

1.0

0.8
Coefficient of Efficiency (E)

0.6

0.4

0.2 Calibration

Validation

0.0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage of catchments where E value exceeded

1.0
Coefficient of Efficiency (E)

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2 Calibration

Validation

0.0
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage of catchments where E value exceeded

Figure 11 Percentage of catchments where E values greater than or equal to a given E value for (a) ranked daily streamflow and
(b) time series of daily streamflow in the calibration and validation periods.

Table 1 Comparison of model performance in predicting streamflow at annual, monthly, and daily time scales for three
selected catchments
Catchment Coefficient of efficiency Bias (%)
Annual Monthly Daily Annual Monthly Daily
143110 0.82 0.90 0.63 3.39 14.47 21.76
318900 0.80 0.89 0.64 0.51 5.49 14.28
405228 0.82 0.84 0.57 1.06 12.04 24.87
Water balance modeling over variable time scales based on the Budyko framework – Model development and testing 129

An important aspect of this study was to explore the
trade-off between parameter identifiability and model per-
formance to produce an optimum model for Australian con-
ditions. Thus, the focus was on maximizing identifiability, so
that model parameters can be related to catchment charac-
teristics. This is important if the models are going to be used
for predictions of ungauged catchments or of the impact of
land-use change, for example. Based on these consider-
teristics (e.g. flow duration curves). The E values between
the simulated and observed daily streamflow time series
are generally lower compared with the E values for the
ranked streamflows (Fig. 11b). The results shown in Fig.
0.50
Monthly

ations, the dynamic water balance model developed in this 0.40

Monthly
Daily
study maintains a minimum level of complexity while still
describing the effects of the underlying processes. 0.30

Frequency
The use of Fu’s curve provides a consistent framework
for the modeling of different processes and results in a sim- 0.20

ple model structure, and each of the parameters has a phys-

ical interpretation. For example, Smax is the maximum soil 0.10

water storage in the root zone and it relates to soil and veg-
etation characteristics. The parameter a1 represents catch- 0.00

ment rainfall retention efficiency, i.e., a larger a1 value will

=5
0.

1.

2.

3.

4.
5-

5-

5-

5-

5-
0-

1-

2-

3-

4-
0.

1.

2.

3.

4.
result in less direct runoff and more residual rainfall. The Parameter α 1

parameter a2 is related to evapotranspiration efficiency

and a larger a2 value indicates a higher partitioning of avail- 0.40

Monthly
able water into evapotranspiration. Finally, parameter d is
Daily
commonly referred as the recession constant (Nathan and 0.30 Monthly
McMahon, 1990). Frequency Daily

Results of the model calibration at monthly time step are

0.20
shown in Figs. 8 and 9. It is clear that the model can be well
calibrated against the water balance criteria mentioned be-
fore for a large number of catchments with different rainfall 0.10

regimes. Significant improvement has been made in the sim-

ulated monthly streamflow compared with the results 0.00
shown in Fig. 6 for the three selected catchments (Fig. 8)
5

=5
0.

1.

2.

3.

4.
5-

5-

5-

5-

5-
0-

1-

2-

3-

4-
0.

1.

2.

3.

4.
with an average E value of 0.90. No systematic error has Parameter α 2
been found in the simulated monthly streamflow and the
deficiencies identified in the annual water balance model 0.25
have mostly been overcome in the dynamic water balance Monthly
Daily
model. The majority of catchments have values of the coef- 0.2
Monthly
ficient of efficiency ranging between 0.6 and 0.9 with less Daily

than 4% of the catchments having calibrated E values less 0.15

Frequency

than 0.5 (Fig. 9a). These results indicate that that the dy-
namic water balance model can be accurately calibrated 0.1

for most Australian catchments at monthly time step. The

0.05
validation results shown in Fig. 9 indicate that over 95% of
the catchments have E values greater than 0.43; over 80%
0
of the catchments have E values greater than 0.60; and over
0

0
50

0
15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50
0

47% of the catchments have E values greater than 0.75. Run-

0-

-1

=5
0-

0-

0-

0-

0-

0-

0-

0-
50

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

off estimates with these threshold E values can be consid- Parameter S max

ered reasonable, acceptable, and good according to Chiew

0.80
and McMahon (1993). These results are very similar to the
Monthly
modeling results for Australian catchments using a 7 param- Daily
eter rainfall–runoff model (Chiew et al., 2002). There were 0.60 Monthly
Daily
few systematic differences in the coefficient of efficiency
Frequency

for catchments across three rainfall regimes (see Fig. 9b).

0.40
Fig. 10 shows comparisons of the simulated and observed
daily flow duration curves for the selected catchments.
They demonstrate that the dynamic water balance model 0.20

provides a reasonably good fit to the flow duration curve

based on observed daily streamflow. The E values of the 0.00
ranked streamflows are very high for most of the catch- =0 0.
1
0.
2
0.
3
0.
4
0.
5
0.
6
0.
7
0.
8
0.
9
1.
0 =1
0- 1- 2- 3- 4- 5- 6- 7- 8- 9-
0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.
ments in the calibration period (Fig. 11a) and the model Parameter d
performed less well in the validation period as expected
(Fig. 11a). The dynamic water balance model is considered Figure 12 Distribution of model parameter values at monthly
capable of accurately simulating daily streamflow charac- and daily time steps.
130
11b indicate that routing of the simulated daily runoff may
be necessary, especially for large catchments.
Figs. 5, 9 and 11 together with the results shown in Table
1 indicate that the water balance model performed best at
monthly time scale in terms of E values and bias. At annual
time scale, the E values are consistently high, but lower E
values are observed at daily time scale. Based on these re-
sults, it can be argued that monthly time scale is appropri-
ate for modeling water balance for the catchments
concerned. The relatively low E values at daily time scale
may be due to lack of flow routing in the model.
Fig. 12 shows the distribution of the calibrated model
parameter values at monthly and daily time scales. Of the
four model parameters, a2 showed the highest consistency
at the two time scales and the parameter reached its limit
imposed in the calibration in 30% of catchments. The mode
of the distribution of the parameter a1 is 1.5–2 at daily time
scale and is increased to 2.5–3 at monthly time scale. These
results indicate that less direct runoff is simulated by the
model at monthly time scale. This is most likely due to the
decrease in variability of daily rainfall caused by the aggre-
gation of the rainfall input to monthly time scale. The
parameter Smax exhibited a large range from 50 to 500 mm,
and its distributions are similar, except for low values. The
distribution of the parameter d shows the largest difference
at the two time scales. The fact that the a1, a2 and Smax
parameters are broadly consistent gives confidence in the
identifiability of these parameters. The calibrated soil-mois-
ture capacity of a catchment Smax should not be dependent
on the timescale of interest. The retention efficiency a1
and the evapotranspiration efficiency a2 should also not be
dependent on timescale of calibration as, for example, the
average fraction of rainfall that becomes direct runoff
(determined by the retention efficiency parameter) should
scale from daily to monthly timescale. The recession con-
stant d, however, is directly dependent on the timescale
of interest through Eqs. (24) and (25). The larger spread of
calibrated parameters at monthly timescale indicates that
the representation of groundwater and baseflow by Eqs.
(24) and (25) is better suited for monthly timescale.
Summary and conclusions
Catchment water balance is controlled by climate variables
and characteristics of the catchment. These factors exhibit
considerable spatial and temporal variability and interact
with each other. As a result, the degree of control exerted
by individual factors on water balance varies with the tem-
poral scales considered. We used a top-down approach to ex-
plore the effects of these factors on catchment water
balance over variable time scales. At mean annual scale,
the water balance is dominated by climatic factors such as
average precipitation and potential evapotranspiration.
The conceptual thinking embedded in the Budyko framework
has led to the development of Budyko-like models and they
proved to be accurate for describing mean annual water bal-
ance under a range of climatic and land-use conditions. The
key to the success of Budyko-like models is to capture the
dominant controls on water balance at the expense of minor
processes. For example, at annual time scale, the effects of
catchment storage and rainfall seasonality may become
L. Zhang et al.
important. One can argue that more complicated models
would be required. Results from this study showed that the
interannual variability of water balance in many Australian
catchments can be estimated from the index of dryness using
the method of Koster and Suarez (1999). Predicted annual
streamflow using this method showed good agreement with
the observed streamflow for some selected catchments,
indicating minimum effect of storage change and rainfall
seasonality in these catchments. However, the method per-
formed poorly in other catchments. At shorter-time scales,
one has to take into consideration of the effects of soil-mois-
ture dynamics on water balance and hence increased model
complexity is required. Following the top-down approach,
we extended the mean annual water balance model of Fu
(1981), a Budyko-like model, to include additional processes
and factors. The resulting model is a parsimonious dynamic
water balance model. The model was calibrated and cross
validated against observed streamflow data at both daily
and monthly time scales. The results showed that the dy-
namic water balance model can be well calibrated and is
capable of accurately simulating monthly streamflow time
series and daily flow duration curves.
Understanding individual hydrological processes and
their relationships with climate and catchment characteris-
tics is an important step in predicting catchment water bal-
ance. However, this does not mean that one should try to
incorporate every known process into a model. The interac-
tion and co-evolution of these processes may manifest
themselves in such a way that the overall behavior of the
catchment can be described by simple relationships. The
strength of purpose-derived relationships, such as Budyko
(1958) and Fu (1981), is to bypass the need to describe each
of these processes in detail. Rather, they try to encapsulate
the combined effect of these competing processes within a
parameter space that describes catchments. The develop-
ment of the dynamic water balance model followed the
same path and this proved to be beneficial with respect to
model parsimony and robustness.
Acknowledgments
The work was supported by the CSIRO Flagship Program
(Water for a Healthy Country T3.S3.P3: River Murray Up-
lands). We would like to thank John Gallant and Trevor Dow-
ling for providing estimates of MrVBF and Peter Briggs for
providing potential evapotranspiration data. We would like
to thank Warrick Dawes, Richard Morton, and three anony-
mous reviewers for their helpful comments.
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