Towards Real‐Time Continental Scale Streamflow Simulation in Continuous and Discrete Space

Details

• Journal Title:
  JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association
• Personal Author:
  Salas, Fernando R. ; Somos‐Valenzuela, Marcelo A. ; Dugger, Aubrey ; Maidment, David R. ; Gochis, David J. ; David, Cédric H. ; Yu, Wei ; Ding, Deng ; Clark, Edward P. ; Noman, Nawajish
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NWC (National Water Center) ; NWS (National Weather Service)
• Description:
  The National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts floods at approximately 3,600 locations across the United States (U.S.). However, the river network, as defined by the 1:100,000 scale National Hydrography Dataset-Plus (NHDPlus) dataset, consists of 2.7 million river segments. Through the National Flood Interoperability Experiment, a continental scale streamflow simulation and forecast system was implemented and continuously operated through the summer of 2015. This system leveraged the WRF-Hydro framework, initialized on a 3-km grid, the Routing Application for the Parallel Computation of Discharge river routing model, operating on the NHDPlus, and real-time atmospheric forcing to continuously forecast streamflow. Although this system produced forecasts, this paper presents a study of the three-month nowcast to demonstrate the capacity to seamlessly predict reach scale streamflow at the continental scale. In addition, this paper evaluates the impact of reservoirs, through a case study in Texas. Validation of the uncalibrated model using observed hourly streamflow at 5,701 U.S. Geological Survey gages shows 26% demonstrate PBias ≤ |25%|, 11% demonstrate Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) ≥ 0.25, and 6% demonstrate both PBias ≤ |25%| and NSE ≥ 0.25. When evaluating the impact of reservoirs, the analysis shows when reservoirs are included, NSE ≥ 0.25 for 56% of the gages downstream while NSE ≥ 0.25 for 11% when they are not. The results presented here provide a benchmark for the evolving hydrology program within the NWS and supports their efforts to develop a reach scale flood forecasting system for the country.
• Keywords:
  Earth-Surface Processes Ecology Water Science And Technology Water Science And Technology Water Science And Technology
• Source:
  JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 54(1), 7-27
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.12586
• ISSN:
  1093-474X ; 1752-1688
• Format:
  PDF
• Publisher:
  Wiley
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Rights Information:
  Accepted Manuscript
• Compliance:
  Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:d9ac6bf979ecf5f32b9780a81e6641939abc6ba4bddcb28fafdf0f9eed938dd6560ade39be4a791d59108c48e782fae3fa608e4466f1df256f9f4d9347cb4485
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/63606/noaa_63606_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 546.26 KB ]