GR3J: a daily watershed model with three free parameters

Abstract This paper describes a new empirical watershed model, the prime feature of which is its parsimony. It involves only three free parameters, a characteristic unparalleled by continuous process models able to work on a wide array of catchments. In spite of its crude simplicity, it achieved, on average, worthwhile results on a set of 140 French catchments and overwhelmingly outperformed a linear model involving 16 parameters. It performed roughly as well as a conceptual model with five free parameters, derived from the well-known TOPMODEL.