Draft release notes HydPy 6.0

[tyralla]

We are happy to announce the release of HydPy 6.0, which comes with many documentation improvements, lots of new models, and, most importantly, a boost in flexibility in combining different model components.

Documentation improvements

We gave the documentation a new structure. Beginners will find it convenient that it now differentiates between a User Guide, which offers a basic introduction to HydPy, and a Reference Manual, which explains everything in depth. We included introductory tutorials (and plan to add tutorials that cover more complex use cases soon) based on the reworked HydPy-H-Lahn example project.

Submodel concept

Previously, one could easily combine models of different "families" in one project (for example, of HydPy-H(BV) and HydPy-L(ARSIM). However, no out-of-the-box mechanism existed for creating new combinations of different model components. Therefore, HydPy 6.0 introduces the Submodel concept. It allows, for example, to set up an HBV-like model that calculates evaporation similar to LARSIM.

So far, the new Submodel concept has been widely rolled out for meteorological factors like global radiation and evapotranspiration, and it at least partly covers topics like runoff concentration and flow formulas. We will modularise more model components in future HydPy versions. See the Submodel Graph in the new Model overview section for a complete list of the currently possible (and advisable) model compositions.

New models

At first sight, HydPy 6.0 comes with a multitude of new models. However, many are just new submodels that we extracted from already existing main models (the new Definitions section explains these terms in detail). For example, HydPy-Evap-PET-HBV96 stems from HydPy-H-HBV96.

Nevertheless, there are still some truly new models worth mentioning:

• HydPy-Evap-PET-AMBAV-1.0 calculates potential evapotranspiration in agreement with the AMBAV 1.0 model of the Deutscher Wetterdienst.
• HydPy-Dam contains three new models for modelling pumps and sluices.
• The new model family HydPy-GA is supposed to provide Green-Ampt infiltration models. The first available models implement the GARTO method, which can be used both as a main model to simulate infiltration excess overland flow for complex rainfall events independently and as a submodel to refine the volume-based runoff generation approach of HydPy-L(ARSIM).
• The new model family HydPy-SW1D introduces "hydrodynamic flood routing" to HydPy. It aims to robustly solve the 1-dimensional shallow water equations in river and channel networks. So, HydPy can now deal much better with catchments in lowland regions where hydraulic structures like weirs and sluices or tidal effects play a major role.

Model name changes

HydPy's model names were too cryptic, so we switched to more descriptive ones. For example, hland_v1 or HydPy-H-Land Version 1 is from now on hland_96 or HydPy-H-HBV96 (adoption of SMHI-IHMS-HBV96). You can find a complete list of all renamings here.

[tyralla]

@BGWKlein @sivogel @parvumflumen Any suggestions are welcome. I hope we can release HydPy 6.0 at the end of this week.

[tyralla]

Okay, I replaced "/master/" with "/6/" and copy-pasted it to the release (which is still a draft until the last binaries are ready).