In the context of global research in snow-affected regions, research in the Australian Alps has been steadily catching up to the more established research environments in other countries. One area that holds immense potential for growth is hydrological modelling. Future hydrological modelling could be used to support a range of management and planning issues, such as to better characterise the contribution of the Australian Alps to flows in the agriculturally important Murray-Darling Basin despite its seemingly small footprint. The lack of recent hydrological modelling work in the Australian Alps has catalysed this review, with the aim to summarise the current state and to provide future directions for hydrological modelling, based on advances in knowledge of the Australian Alps from adjacent disciplines and global developments in the field of hydrologic modelling. Future directions proffered here include moving beyond the previously applied conceptual models to more physically based models, supported by an increase in data collection in the region, and modelling efforts that consider non-stationarity of hydrological response, especially that resulting from climate change.

The extreme precipitation resulting from climate change has been causing increasingly serious damage in populated areas over the past 10-15 years. The torrents of flash floods cause significant financial damage to both the natural environment and man-made structures (such as roads and bridges). The determination of the physical geographic parameters of this phenomenon (e.g. the amount of runoff water) is significantly affected by technical uncertainties, usually due to the lack of monitoring systems. However, the application of modern geospatial tools can improve the quality of input data needed for runoff modelling. In the present study, an existing runoff model (the Stowe model) developed by ESRI was further enhanced with field measurements, soil parameters, GIS, and remote sensing data, resulting in the creation of the model named ME-Hydrograph. Finally, the two models were compared, and we examined the capacity of an urban stormwater drainage system through surface runoff modelling. The aim of the research was to create a runoff model that can be easily and quickly used. The application of this geospatial model presented in the study can be useful not only in the examination of urban stormwater drainage but also in contributing to the understanding and management of flash floods that occur in Hungary. Additionally, it can aid in the development of risk mapping related to flash floods in the country.

A spatially distributed, physically based, hydrologic modeling system (MIKE SHE) was applied to quantify intra- and inter-annual discharge from the snow and glacierized Zackenberg River drainage basin (512 km 2; 20% glacier cover) in northeast Greenland. Evolution of snow accumulation, distribution by wind-blown snow, blowing-snow sublimation, and snow and ice surface melt were simulated by a spatially distributed, physically based, snow-evolution modelling system (SnowModel) and used as input to MIKE SHE. Discharge simulations were performed for three periods 1997-2001 (calibration period), 2001-2005 (validation period), and 2071-2100 (scenario period). The combination of SnowModel and MIKE SHE shows promising results; the timing and magnitude of simulated discharge were generally in accordance with observations (R-2 = 0.58); however, discrepancies between simulated and observed discharge hydrographs do occur (maximum daily difference up to 44.6 m(3) s(-1) and up to 9% difference between observed and simulated cumulative discharge). The model does not perform well when a sudden outburst of glacial dammed water occurs, like the 2005 extreme flood event. The modelling study showed that soil processes related to yearly change in active layer depth and glacial processes (such as changes in yearly glacier area, seasonal changes in the internal glacier drainage system, and the sudden release of glacial bulk water storage) need to be determined, for example, from field studies and incorporated in the models before basin runoff can be quantified more precisely. The SnowModel and MIKE SHE model only include first-order effects of climate change. For the period 2071-2100, future IPCC A2 and B2 climate scenarios based on the HIRHAM regional climate model and HadCM3 atmosphere-ocean general circulation model simulations indicated a mean annual Zackenberg runoff about 1.5 orders of magnitude greater (around 650 mmWE year(-1)) than from today 1997-2005 (around 430 mmWE year(-1)), mainly based on changes in negative glacier net mass balance. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.