The impact of standard and hard‐coded parameters on the hydrologic fluxes in the Noah‐MP land surface model

Summary

Abstract Land surface models incorporate a large number of process descriptions, containing a multitude of parameters. These parameters are typically read from tabulated input files. Some of these parameters might be fixed numbers in the computer code though, which hinder model agility during calibration. Here we identified 139 hard‐coded parameters in the model code of the Noah land surface model with multiple process options (Noah‐MP). We performed a Sobol' global sensitivity analysis of Noah‐MP for a specific set of process options, which includes 42 out of the 71 standard parameters and 75 out of the 139 hard‐coded parameters. The sensitivities of the hydrologic output fluxes latent heat and total runoff as well as their component fluxes were evaluated at 12 catchments within the Unite