Figure 5 . Performance of each model configuration for multiple temporal aggregations. Each box shows the interquartile range, with the median marked as the central line. A 95% confidence interval for the estimate of the median is represented by the notched portion. Outliers are shown as open circles.
3.2 Diagnostic analysis
In section 3.1 we demonstrated that the NN configurations were able to consistently outperform the SA configuration for both latent and sensible heat flux predictions at a half-hourly timestep. The range of performance differences shown in Figure 4 demonstrates that the NN-based simulations are significantly different from the physically-based representation in SA. Consequently, water and energy partitioning in the NN configurations is likely much different than in SA. To explore the effect of the new NN-based parameterizations on the simulated water cycle we first compared the simulated evaporative fraction (ET/P) to the observed (Figure 6). In all three model configurations the KGE values tend to be higher for sites where the simulated evaporative fraction closely matches the observed value.