Benchmarking data-driven rainfall-runoff models in Great Britain: a comparison of LSTM-based models with four lumped conceptual models

Long short-term memory models (LSTMs) are recurrent neural networks from the emerging field of Deep Learning (DL), which have shown recent promise when predicting time-series especially when data are abundant. Rainfall-runoff modelling presents a challenge, yet accurate hydrological models are vital for flood forecasting, hazard impact assessment, and to assess the potential effects of climate change on floods and water resources. In this study, we compare the performance of two DL-based models, a LSTM and an Entity Aware LSTM (EA LSTM). The DL models were trained using a newly published data set, CAMELS-GB, for a sample of 518 catchments across Great Britain. To identify spatial and seasonal patterns in model performance, we compare the DL models against benchmark outputs from four lumped conceptual models recently configured for rainfall-runoff modelling in Great Britain. Our findings show that the LSTM models simulate discharge with consistently high model performance scores, including in catchments typically considered difficult to model. The LSTM achieves a mean catchment NSE of 0.88 (0.86 for the EALSTM), which represents a performance improvement of 10 %–16 % compared with the benchmark conceptual models. Seasonal and spatial patterns indicate that the largest performance improvement relative to the benchmark is in the drier summer months and in drier catchments in the South East of England. By comparing LSTMs with conceptual models, we diagnose possible reasons for their different performance. We suggest that LSTMs offer useful predictive capability for rainfall-runoff modelling in Great Britain and elsewhere and note their value to support process understanding in locations where processes are less well understood.