A look at infiltration

Introduction Conclusions References Tables Figures Back Close Full Screen / Esc Papers published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions are under open-access review for the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Abstract Introduction Conclusions References Tables Figures Back Close Full Screen / Esc Printer-friendly Version Interactive Discussion EGU Abstract A simplified, vertically averaged model of soil moisture interpreted at the daily time scale and forced by a stochastic process of instantaneous rainfall events is compared with a model which uses a non-overlapping rectangular pulse rainfall model and a more physically based description of infiltration. The models are compared with respect to 5 the importance of short timescale (intra-storm) variable infiltration in determining soil moisture dynamics at the daily timescale. Differences in approach to infiltration modelling show only minor effects on the probabilistic structure of soil moisture dynamics as simulated in the two models. Examining closely the partitioning of losses during a rainfall event reveals that losses to percolation are significantly greater than that of 10 Hortonian runoff. A possible improvement of the instantaneous rainfall model to incorporate a jump distribution with a state dependent mean is also discussed.