A brief history of information and disinformation in hydrological data and the impact on the evaluation of hydrological models

Summary

This paper considers what we know about the potential for disinformation in hydrological data when used for the evaluation of hydrological models.This will generally arise from epistemic uncertainties associated with hydrological observations, particularly from nonstationary or extrapolated rating curves for discharges, and poor rainfall and snowmelt information when interpolated over basin areas.Approaches based on information theory are not well suited to consideration of such epistemic uncertainties in model evaluation and an alternative approach based on setting limits of acceptability independent of any model runs is suggested.This allows for both the rejection of all models tried, and for acceptability of models across different model structures and parameter sets.The paper concludes