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This paper uses the Budyko and Fu models to estimate mean annual runoff in 0.05° grid cells across southeast Australia, and assesses the estimates against observations in 323 catchments. The results show that the Budyko model can provide reasonable estimates of runoff and is suitable for data limited regions. In regions where there are some streamflow data available, the calibration of a single parameter in the Fu model gives better runoff estimates than the Budyko model and similar to regionalised rainfall-runoff models. In drier regions, the consideration of different vegetation types in the Fu model can improve the modelling results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes a daily rainfall, potential evaporation and streamflow data set compiled for the important water resources region of southeast Australia, and the application of six commonly used lumped conceptual rainfall-runoff models to estimate daily runoff across the region. The daily climate data set and the daily modelled runoff are available from 1895 to 2008 at 0.05° grid resolution across the region. The modelling exercise indicates that the rainfall-runoff models can generally be calibrated to reproduce the daily observed streamflow (for 232 catchments in the high runoff generation areas), and the regionalisation results indicate that the use of optimised parameter values from a gauged catchment nearby can model runoff reasonably well in the ungauged areas. There are differences between the six models, but they are relatively small when used to describe aggregated results across large regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]