Source code for the global hydrological model HydroPy

Synopsis

HydroPy is a global hydrological model combining hydrological land surface processes and river routing. It is based on the older Max Planck Institut for Meteorologys Hydrology Model (MPI-HM), however it is fully revised and written in Python. This model is actively developed and will get regular updates. Currently, its development is founded by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht and the DAAD project The Ocean's Alkalinity.

Motivation

While the older Fortran version of the MPI-HM is a very fast model, its development is hampered by an inflexible structure and a large overhead whenever new processes are implemented. Additionally, it only outputs service format data and time consuming post-processing is needed to produce netCDF files. The python version uses much more high-level routines and is strongly object-orienting enabling a much faster and easier development. HydroPy is the official successor of the MPI-HM.

Installation

HydroPy requires a python 3.x environment with numpy, netCDF4, xarray and termcolor packages installed. The most convinient way would be to setup an Anaconda installation and create a new environment dedicated to the hydropy model, e.g.

conda create -n hydropy numpy xarray netCDF4 termcolor

and switch to this environment using

conda activate hydropy

Run HydroPy

HydroPy is called from command line using the main function `./hydro.py`. Required options are the paths to a netCDF file containing meteorological forcing data and a setup file containing the path of the land surface conditions file, and optionally further path information and model parameters:

./hydro.py -f forcing.nc -s setup.ini

The forcing files has to provide the variables TSurf [K], Precip [kg m-2 s-1], and PET [kg m-2 s-1] at a temporal resolution of 1 day and a spatial resolution similar to the land surface conditions file.

The setup file needs to be constructed with one pair of options and values per line, separated by a colon, e.g.

para : hydropy_landsurface_parameter_v1.0.0.nc
opt1 : val1
opt2 : val2

A full list of all available options with either the default or user defined values (if set in the setup.ini file) can be printed with

./hydro.py -s setup.ini -p

Further options can be displayed with

hydro.py --help

Documentation and References

A documentation paper preprint is published in GMDD. A public version of the HydroPy Model and an example land surface parameter dataset at 0.5 degree can be found on Zenodo.

Contributors

• Tobias Stacke (tobias.stacke@hzg.de)
• Stefan Hagemann (stefan.hagemann@hzg.de)

License

HydroPy

Copyright (C) 2020-2021 Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.