MOHYSE–a simple lumped hydrological model for educational and research purposes

MOHYSE, short for MOdèle HYdrologique Simplifié à l’Extrême (French for Hydrological model simplified to the extreme), is a straightforward lumped hydrological model initially designed to teach hydrological modelling to undergraduate and graduate students nearly two decades ago. Due to its simplicity and relatively good performance in simulating streamflow across various watersheds, it has become a popular choice for research studies. Although some studies directly use MOHYSE for generating streamflow results, it is primarily utilized in comparative studies and multi-model applications. Given its widespread use within the scientific community, it has become essential to provide a clear reference detailing its structure, which this paper addresses. The paper also presents a comparison of MOHYSE with three others lumped hydrological models using a selection of 3,255 North American watersheds to establish a benchmark for MOHYSE’s performance.