• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.563-574
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• 2023

Recently, climate change has affected functional responses of river basins to meteorological variables, emphasizing the importance of rainfall-runoff simulation research. Simultaneously, the growing interest in machine learning has led to its increased application in hydrological studies. However, it is not yet clear whether machine learning models are more advantageous than the conventional conceptual models. In this study, we compared the performance of the conventional GR6J model with the machine learning-based Random Forest model across 38 basins in Korea using both gauged and ungauged basin prediction methods. For gauged basin predictions, each model was calibrated or trained using observed daily runoff data, and their performance was evaluted over a separate validation period. Subsequently, ungauged basin simulations were evaluated using proximity-based parameter regionalization with Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation (LOOCV). In gauged basins, the Random Forest consistently outperformed the GR6J, exhibiting superiority across basins regardless of whether they had strong or weak rainfall-runoff correlations. This suggest that the inherent data-driven training structures of machine learning models, in contrast to the conceptual models, offer distinct advantages in data-rich scenarios. However, the advantages of the machine-learning algorithm were not replicated in ungauged basin predictions, resulting in a lower performance than that of the GR6J. In conclusion, this study suggests that while the Random Forest model showed enhanced performance in trained locations, the existing GR6J model may be a better choice for prediction in ungagued basins.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.691-711
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• 2022

The state-of-the-art Earth system model as a virtual Earth is required for studies of current and future climate change or climate crises. This complex numerical model can account for almost all human activities and natural phenomena affecting the atmosphere of Earth. The Unified Model (UM) from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UK Met Office) is among the best Earth system models as a scientific tool for studying the atmosphere. However, owing to the expansive numerical integration cost and substantial output size required to maintain the UM, individual research groups have had to rely only on supercomputers. The limitations of computer resources, especially the computer environment being blocked from outside network connections, reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of conducting research using the model, as well as improving the component codes. Therefore, this study has presented detailed guidance for installing a new version of the UM on high-performance parallel computers (Linux clusters) owned by individual researchers, which would help researchers to easily work with the UM. The numerical integration performance of the UM on Linux clusters was also evaluated for two different model resolutions, namely N96L85 (1.875° ×1.25° with 85 vertical levels up to 85 km) and N48L70 (3.75° ×2.5° with 70 vertical levels up to 80 km). The one-month integration times using 256 cores for the AMIP and CMIP simulations of N96L85 resolution were 169 and 205 min, respectively. The one-month integration time for an N48L70 AMIP run using 252 cores was 33 min. Simulated results on 2-m surface temperature and precipitation intensity were compared with ERA5 re-analysis data. The spatial distributions of the simulated results were qualitatively compared to those of ERA5 in terms of spatial distribution, despite the quantitative differences caused by different resolutions and atmosphere-ocean coupling. In conclusion, this study has confirmed that UM can be successfully installed and used in high-performance Linux clusters.