Is a calibrated model legitimate to use for analyzing what happened in other years, or what will happen with different dam-release alternatives?
A25. As with any model, one s confidence in the results grows after demonstrating that the model performs well over the range of conditions you may expect to find, or even to predict. But one strength of a model is to predict things you cannot easily measure. Being a physically based model that has been used in a variety of circumstances, I can safely say that SNTEMP predicts well, generally less than 0.5 C on average and less than 1.5 C most of the time, given representative input data. If it predicts generally within these bounds, relative temperature changes that one can expect from a variety of management actions in other year types may be used as good guidance. However, models are always wrong to some degree, so setting the model at risk is a wise idea. I.E., keep your eye on it.
