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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2025-5201</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Hybrid models generalize better to warmer climate conditions than process-based and purely data-driven models</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Bohl</surname>
<given-names>Jan P.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wood</surname>
<given-names>Raul R.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4172-7719</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Frank</surname>
<given-names>Corinna</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2450-935X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Astagneau</surname>
<given-names>Paul C.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6688-5783</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Peters</surname>
<given-names>Jonas</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Brunner</surname>
<given-names>Manuela I.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8824-877X</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
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<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos Dorf, Switzerland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Climate Change, Extremes and Natural Hazards in Alpine Regions Research Center CERC, Davos Dorf, Switzerland</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Department of Mathematics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>07</day>
<month>11</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2025</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>45</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Jan P. Bohl et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-5201/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-5201/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-5201/egusphere-2025-5201.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-5201/egusphere-2025-5201.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Deep-learning based rainfall-runoff models, in particular long short-term memory networks (LSTM), have been shown to outperform traditional hydrological models at various tasks, both when used as purely data-driven models and when combined with process-based models in a hybrid setting. These tasks include predictions in ungauged basins (PUB) and regions (PUR), tasks which have traditionally been challenging for conceptual hydrological models. While the spatial generalizability of deep-learning based models has received a lot of attention, it is less clear how they generalize to unseen and warmer climate conditions, i.e. how suitable these models are for hydrological climate impact studies. To address this research gap, we assess the ability of three types of models including (1) fully data-driven (LSTMs), (2) conceptual (Hydrologiska Byr&amp;aring;ns Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV)), and (3) hybrid (LSTM-HBV) models to simulate streamflow under conditions warmer than those used to train the models by running a differential split sample test. That is, we trained the models using data from the historical period 1960&amp;ndash;1990 and evaluated them on both data of this period as well as of the warmer period 2000&amp;ndash;2023. We find that LSTMs, while being the most accurate during the 1960&amp;ndash;1990 period, have inferior generalizability to the warm period compared to the hybrid and conceptual models. In addition, we show that when generalizing to the warm period, hybrid models have similar accuracy as LSTMs, independently of whether the entire streamflow distribution or extreme events such as floods and droughts are considered. However, for snow-dominated catchments, all models suffer from similar reductions in accuracy when simulating streamflow under unseen climate conditions and the LSTM is the most accurate model for all periods. A detailed look at the snowmelt simulations of the hybrid and conceptual model suggests that better process-representation might be needed to accurately capture the dynamics of snow-melt and -accumulation processes, which are highly sensitive to changes in temperature. We conclude that the hybrid models effectively combine the high accuracy of LSTMs when predicting in ungauged basins with the good generalizability under changes in climate of conceptual hydrological models. This makes them a suitable choice for hydrological climate change impact assessments, particularly in ungauged basins.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung</funding-source>
<award-id>TMSGI2_218486</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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