Technical note: Pitfalls in using log-transformed flows within the KGE criterion

Santos, Léonard; Thirel, Guillaume; Perrin, Charles

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-4583-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-4583-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-4583-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 8

Technical note

|

30 Aug 2018

Technical note |

| 30 Aug 2018

Technical note: Pitfalls in using log-transformed flows within the KGE criterion

Léonard Santos, Guillaume Thirel, and Charles Perrin

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Final revised paper (published on 30 Aug 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 08 Jun 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

SC1: 'On Table 1: A fifth transformation of the low flow', John Ding, 09 Jun 2018
- AC1: 'Answer to Dr J. Ding interactive comment', Léonard Santos, 14 Jun 2018
  - SC2: 'A graphical illustration', John Ding, 17 Jun 2018
    - SC3: 'Addendum', John Ding, 18 Jun 2018
      - EC2: 'Fruitful discussion', Bettina Schaefli, 10 Jul 2018
      - SC5: 'Re-ranking the transformations', John Ding, 27 Jul 2018
        
        AC5: 'Answer to Dr J. Ding comments', Léonard Santos, 01 Aug 2018
RC1: 'Review', Lieke Melsen, 22 Jun 2018
- AC2: 'Answer to the review comments by Lieke Melsen', Léonard Santos, 29 Jun 2018
RC2: 'Comments to the technical note written by Santos et al.', Björn Guse, 02 Jul 2018
- AC3: 'Answer to the review comments by Björn Guse', Léonard Santos, 17 Jul 2018
SC4: 'Technical note: Pitfalls in using log-transformed flows within the KGE criterion', Sivarajah Mylevaganam, 08 Jul 2018
- EC1: 'Editor reply to partially inappropriate short comment', Bettina Schaefli, 09 Jul 2018
- AC4: 'Answer to the comments by S. Mylevaganam', Léonard Santos, 17 Jul 2018
EC3: 'Final editor's comments', Bettina Schaefli, 22 Aug 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by editor) (22 Aug 2018) by Bettina Schaefli

AR by Léonard Santos on behalf of the Authors (22 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (23 Aug 2018) by Bettina Schaefli

AR by Léonard Santos on behalf of the Authors (23 Aug 2018) Manuscript

Short summary

The Kling and Gupta efficiency (KGE) is a score used in hydrology to evaluate flow simulation compared to observations. In order to force the evaluation on the low flows, some authors used the log-transformed flow to calculate the KGE. In this technical note, we show that this transformation should be avoided because it produced numerical flaws that lead to difficulties in the score value interpretation.