Arctic HYCOS – 1st Workshop on Improved Monitoring, Accuracy and Data Availability in the Arctic Drainage Basin: Meeting Summary Report and Implementation Plan

The World Hydrological Cycle Observing System (WHYCOS) is a global programme, developed in response to the scarcity or absence of accurate, timely and accessible data and information in real or near real time on freshwater resources in many parts of the world. The programme is implemented through various components (HYCOSs) at the regional and/or basin scale. It is guided by the WHYCOS International Advisory Group (WIAG). The Arctic-HYCOS program is being promoted through this Workshop. For more information on the WHYCOS, please see http://www.whycos.org/cms/. The main goal of the Arctic-HYCOS program is to improve monitoring, data accuracy, availability and dissemination of information in the pan-arctic drainage basin. This project is science-driven and is aimed at monitoring freshwater fluxes and pollutants into the Arctic Ocean with the objective of improving climate predictions in the Northern Hemisphere and assessing the pollution of the Arctic coastal areas and the open Arctic Ocean. Arctic-HYCOS is currently organized along three main activities. 1. Develop and optimal design fro hydro-meteorological monitoring networks to capture the essential variability of the Arctic hydrological system and to enable accurate and efficient assessment of change 2. Estimate uncertainty of available in situ and possible remote sensing data including analysis of accuracy and systematic errors of new observation technology 3. Develop an integrated pan-arctic data consolidation and analysis system for the water cycle uniting data from various in-situ and other sources

On the importance of sublimation to an alpine snow mass balance in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

A modelling study was undertaken to evaluate the contribution of sublimation to an alpine snow mass balance in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Snow redistribution and sublimation by wind, snowpack sublimation and snowmelt were simulated for two winters over an alpine ridge transect located in the Canada Rocky Mountains. The resulting snowcover regimes were compared to those from manual snow surveys. Simulations were performed using physically based blowing snow (PBSM) and snowpack ablation (SNOBAL) models. A hydrological response unit (HRU)-based spatial discretization was used rather than a more computationally expensive fully-distributed one. The HRUs were set up to follow an aerodynamic sequence, whereby eroded snow was transported from windswept, upwind HRUs to drift accumulating, downwind HRUs. That snow redistribution by wind can be adequately simulated in computationally efficient HRUs over this ridge has important implications for representing snow transport in large-scale hydrology models and land surface schemes. Alpine snow sublimation losses, in particular blowing snow sublimation losses, were significant. Snow mass losses to sublimation as a percentage of cumulative snowfall were estimated to be 20–32% with the blowing snow sublimation loss amounting to 17–19% of cumulative snowfall. This estimate is considered to be a conservative estimate of the blowing snow sublimation loss in the Canadian Rocky Mountains because the study transect is located in the low alpine zone where the topography is more moderate than the high alpine zone and windflow separation was not observed. An examination of the suitability of PBSM's sublimation estimates in this environment and of the importance of estimating blowing snow sublimation on the simulated snow accumulation regime was conducted by omitting sublimation calculations. Snow accumulation in HRUs was overestimated by 30% when neglecting blowing snow sublimation calculations

Translating hydrology research into practice: A Canadian Perspective

EGU23-4485 https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-4485 EGU General Assembly 2023 © Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.Peer ReviewedHydrology research is regarded as vital for advancing human development and environmental conservation through improved hydrological process understanding and by devising solutions to address water management challenges. This is particularly acute in a time of global change and the need to find pathways to water sustainability. Success for research in hydrology is often measured through quantitative research outputs, such as the number of journal publications, citation indices, number of students trained, patents, and external research funding. User involvement in the research and development process is rarely considered a metric for success in hydrology. Despite successful scientific or engineering advancements, a greater scientific understanding of hydrology and ever-increasing publications, much of the research has limited uptake by practitioners and implementation into practice, leading to a growing gap between research and practice. This lack of utilisation is not due to a lack of need by users, but rather is a symptom of the disconnect between these advances and research that would most add value to practitioners and their application needs. We explore some outstanding challenges in translating academic research into practice and make some recommendations to bridge the increasing gaps between research and practice through a transdisciplinary approach, user engagement metrics in funded research and strong knowledge mobilization. We also discuss the success and challenges of these approaches in the Global Water Futures program along with lessons learned

Parameter-state ensemble thinning for short-term hydrological prediction

The main sources of uncertainty in hydrological modelling can be summarized as structural errors, parameter errors, and data errors. Operational modellers are generally more concerned with predictive ability than model errors, and this paper presents a new, simple method to improve predictive ability. The method is called parameter-state ensemble thinning (P-SET). P-SET takes a large ensemble of continuous model runs and applies screening criteria to reduce the size of the ensemble. The goal is to find the most promising parameter-state combinations for analysis during the prediction period. Each prediction period begins with the same large ensemble, but the screening criteria are free to select a different sub-set of simulations for each separate prediction period. The case study is from June to October 2014 for a small (1324&thinsp;km2) watershed just north of Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada, using a Canadian semi-distributed hydrologic land-surface scheme. The study examines how well the approach works given various levels of certainty in the data, beginning with certainty in the streamflow and precipitation, followed by uncertainty in the streamflow and certainty in the precipitation, and finally uncertainty in both the streamflow and precipitation. The approach is found to work in this case when streamflow and precipitation are fairly certain, while being more challenging to implement in a forecasting scenario where future streamflow and precipitation are much less certain. The main challenge is determined to be related to parametric uncertainty and ideas for overcoming this challenge are discussed. The approach also highlights model structural errors, which are also discussed.</p

Development of the MESH modelling system for hydrological ensemble forecasting of the Laurentian Great Lakes at the regional scale

International audienceEnvironment Canada has been developing a community environmental modelling system (Modélisation Environmentale Communautaire ? MEC), which is designed to facilitate coupling between models focusing on different components of the earth system. The ultimate objective of MEC is to use the coupled models to produce operational forecasts. MESH (MEC ? Surface and Hydrology), a configuration of MEC currently under development, is specialized for coupled land-surface and hydrological models. To determine the specific requirements for MESH, its different components were implemented on the Laurentian Great Lakes watershed, situated on the Canada-US border. This experiment showed that MESH can help us better understand the behaviour of different land-surface models, test different schemes for producing ensemble streamflow forecasts, and provide a means of sharing the data, the models and the results with collaborators and end-users. This modelling framework is at the heart of a testbed proposal for the Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment (HEPEX) which should allow us to make use of the North American Ensemble Forecasting System (NAEFS) to improve streamflow forecasts of the Great Lakes tributaries, and demonstrate how MESH can contribute to a Community Hydrologic Prediction System (CHPS)

Using the MESH modelling system for hydrological ensemble forecasting of the Laurentian Great Lakes at the regional scale

International audienceEnvironment Canada has been developing a community environmental modelling system (Modélisation Environmentale Communautaire ? MEC), which is designed to facilitate coupling between models focusing on different components of the earth system. The ultimate objective of MEC is to use the coupled models to produce operational forecasts. MESH (MEC ? Surface and Hydrology), a configuration of MEC currently under development, is specialized for coupled land-surface and hydrological models. To determine the specific requirements for MESH, its different components were implemented on the Laurentian Great Lakes watershed, situated on the Canada?U.S. border. This experiment showed that MESH can help us better understand the behaviour of different land-surface models, test different schemes for producing ensemble streamflow forecasts, and provide a means of sharing the data, the models and the results with collaborators and end-users. This modelling framework is at the heart of a testbed proposal for the Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment (HEPEX) which should allow us to make use of the North American Ensemble Forecasting System (NAEFS) to improve streamflow forecasts of the Great Lakes tributaries, and demonstrate how MESH can contribute to a Community Hydrologic Prediction System (CHPS)

Physically based cold regions river flood prediction in data-sparse regions: The Yukon River Basin flow forecasting system

Global Water Futures; Yukon EnvironmentPeer ReviewedThe Yukon River Basin (YRB) is one of the most important river networks shared between Canada and The United States, and is one of the largest river basins in the subarctic region of North America. The Canadian part of the YRB is characterized by steeply sloped, partly glaciated mountain headwaters that generate considerable runoff during melt of glaciers and seasonal snow-cover. Snow redistribution, snowmelt, glacier melt and freezing–thawing soil processes in winter and spring along with summertime rainfall-runoff and evapotranspiration processes are thus key components of streamflow generation in the basin, making conceptual rainfall-runoff models unsuitable for this cold region. Due to the remote high latitudes and high altitudes of the basin, there is a paucity of observational data, making heavily calibrated conceptual modeling approaches infeasible. At the request of the Yukon Government, this project developed and operationalized a streamflow forecasting system for the Yukon River and several of its tributary rivers using a distributed land surface modeling approach developed for large-scale implementation in cold regions. This represents a substantial advance in bringing operational hydrological forecasting to the Canadian subarctic for the first time. This experience will inform future research to operation improvements as Canada develops a nationally coordinated flood forecast system

Diagnosis of Historical and Future Flow Regimes of the Bow River at Calgary Using a Dynamically Downscaled Climate Model and a Physically Based Land Surface Hydrological Model : Final Report

Final Report developed under Agreement #AP744 for the Natural Resources Canada Climate Change Adaptation Program.Developed under Agreement #AP744 for the Natural Resources Canada Climate Change Adaptation Program, with financial and in-kind assistance from Natural Resources Canada, Alberta Environment and Parks, the City of Calgary, Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Global Water Futures program.Non-Peer ReviewedThis report assesses the impacts of projected climate change on the hydrology, including the flood frequencies, of the Bow and Elbow Rivers above Calgary, Alberta. It reports on investigations of the effects of projected climate change on the runoff mechanisms for the Bow and Elbow River basins, which are important mountain headwaters in Alberta, Canada. The study developed a methodology and applied a case study for incorporating climate change into flood frequency estimates that can be applied to a variety of river basins across Canada