http://ci-water.

org/

Performance Evaluation of ADHydro Preliminary Results:

Seasonal Time Scale

Hernan A Moreno, Leticia Goncalves Pureza, Fred L. Ogden and Robert Christian Steinke.
Dept. of Civil and Architectural Engineering, University of Wyoming

Abstract

ADHydro is a physics-based, high-resolution,

distributed hydrologic model designed for
simulating large watersheds in a massively parallel
computing environment.
Preliminary model
results are obtained for the Upper Green River
Watershed in Wyoming, running on the Mt. Moran
supercomputer at the University of Wyoming.
Results cover one water year, which allows
evaluation of the model at a seasonal time scale.
Performance evaluation of the model in terms of
simulation
correctness
and
computational
efficiency is presented. These results include the
effects of recent code changes: algorithms for
mesh improvement such as breaking digital dams,
a more efficient drain down process for generating
realistic groundwater initial conditions, and
general bug fixes.

ADHydro Model

A high resolution, parallelized, multi-physics

model integrating hydrologic process,
engineered infrastructure, water resources
polices and water management into spatially
distributed simulations on an unstructured
(TIN) grid.

WRF Forcing

3Rd Conference on
Hydroinformatics - 2015

Groundwater Initial Condition

WRF Model provides climate forcing during Aug 2000

st
st
nd
Aug 2001. Winter: Dec 21 Mar 21 Summer: Jun 22
nd
Sept 22 . Mean values of (1) Air Temperature and (2)
Specific Humidity 2-m above surface, (3) Wind speed 10-m
above surface, and (4) Seasonal Precipitation.

Winter

EPSCoR
EPS 1135483

Groundwater Head

masl

Summer

Seasonal Maps of Hydrologic Variables

ADHydro's output spatial distribution of (1) daily seasonal
evapotranspiration and, (2) mean seasonal snow water
equivalent.

Winter

Summer
mm/d

Monthly Hydrologic Variability

0.57

ADHydro preliminary results between Aug 2000 March 2001 are

presented in terms of mean basin: (1) Precipitation,
Evapotranspiration and Snow Water Equivalent, and (2) Ground
Water Storage.

Building blocks:
2D overland flow
2D saturated groundwater flow
1D channel routing with reservoirs
1D Talbot-Ogden (T-O) infiltration[1]
Noah-MP evapotranspiration/snow melt[2]
The Weather Research and Forecasting
[3]
(WRF) meteorological model forcing
Water management layer with agentbased irrigation, hourly decision time

0.43

mm/d
4.91
3.92
2.94

0.29

1.96

0.14

0.98

mm
350
300

Basin Area:

1220 km2
Mean Slope: 14.05%
Mean Elevation: 2829 m

Results illustrate a precipitation peak during Jan 2001. Snow

accumulations peak during the months of Oct-Nov-Dec after
which a snow melt period begins and continues until Sep-Oct.
Evapotranspiration values are always smaller in volume than
Precipitation except by the month of February when excess water
from snow melting processes occur, adding to precipitation supply.

35
30

250

25

200

20

150

15

100

10

50

Dominant soil type: Silty Clay

Dominant vegetation type: Deciduous
broadleaf forest

References
[1] Talbot, C. A., and Ogden, F. L. (2008). A method for computing infiltration and redistribution
in a discretized moisture content
domain, Water Resour. Res., 44(8), W08453,
DOI:10.1029/2008WR006815.
[2] Niu, G.-Y., et al. (2011). The community Noah land surface model with multiparameterization
options (Noah-MP): 1. Model description and evaluation with local-scale measurements, J.
Geophys. Res., DOI:10.1029/2010JD015139.
[3] Michalakes, J., et al. (2004). The Weather reseach and forecast model: Software architecture
and performance, Proceedings of the 11th ECMWF Workshop on the Use of High Performance
Computing In Meteorology, Reading U.K. Ed. George Mozdzynski.