Probabilistic forecast of daily areal precipitation focusing on extreme events

A dynamical downscaling scheme is usually used to provide a short range flood forecasting system with high-resolved precipitation fields. Unfortunately, a single forecast of this scheme has a high uncertainty concerning intensity and location especially during extreme events. Alternatively, statistical downscaling techniques like the analogue method can be used which can supply a probabilistic forecasts. However, the performance of the analogue method is affected by the similarity criterion, which is used to identify similar weather situations. To investigate this issue in this work, three different similarity measures are tested: the euclidean distance (1), the Pearson correlation (2) and a combination of both measures (3). The predictor variables are geopotential height at 1000 and 700 hPa-level and specific humidity fluxes at 700 hPa-level derived from the NCEP/NCAR-reanalysis project. The study is performed for three mesoscale catchments located in the Rhine basin in Germany. It is validated by a jackknife method for a period of 44 years (1958–2001). The ranked probability skill score, the Brier Skill score, the Heidke skill score and the confidence interval of the Cramer association coefficient are calculated to evaluate the system for extreme events. The results show that the combined similarity measure yields the best results in predicting extreme events. However, the confidence interval of the Cramer coefficient indicates that this improvement is only significant compared to the Pearson correlation but not for the euclidean distance. Furthermore, the performance of the presented forecasting system is very low during the summer and new predictors have to be tested to overcome this problem

Gaussian and non-Gaussian inverse modeling of groundwater flow using copulas and random mixing

This paper presents a new copula-based methodology for Gaussian and non-Gaussian inverse modeling of groundwater flow. The presented approach is embedded in a Monte Carlo framework and it is based on the concept of mixing spatial random fields where a spatial copula serves as spatial dependence function. The target conditional spatial distribution of hydraulic transmissivities is obtained as a linear combination of unconditional spatial fields. The corresponding weights of this linear combination are chosen such that the combined field has the prescribed spatial variability, and honors all the observations of hydraulic transmissivities. The constraints related to hydraulic head observations are nonlinear. In order to fulfill these constraints, a connected domain in the weight space, inside which all linear constraints are fulfilled, is identified. This domain is defined analytically and includes an infinite number of conditional fields (i.e., conditioned on the observed hydraulic transmissivities), and the nonlinear constraints can be fulfilled via minimization of the deviation of the modeled and the observed hydraulic heads. This procedure enables the simulation of a great number of solutions for the inverse problem, allowing a reasonable quantification of the associated uncertainties. The methodology can be used for fields with Gaussian copula dependence, and fields with specific non-Gaussian copula dependence. Further, arbitrary marginal distributions can be considered

Regionalizing nonparametric models of precipitation amounts on different temporal scales

Parametric distribution functions are commonly used to model precipitation amounts at gauged and ungauged locations. Nonparametric distributions offer a more flexible way to model precipitation amounts. However, the nonparametric models do not exhibit parameters that can be easily regionalized for application at ungauged locations. To overcome this deficiency, we present a new interpolation scheme for nonparametric models and evaluate the usage of daily gauges for sub-daily resolutions

Clustering simultaneous occurrences of the extreme floods in the Neckar catchment

Flood protection is crucial for making socioeconomic policies due to the high losses of extreme floods. So far, the synchronous occurrences of flood events have not been deeply investigated. In this paper, multivariate analysis was implemented to reveal the interconnection between these floods in spatiotemporal resolution. The discharge measurements of 46 gauges with a continuous daily time series for 55 years were taken over the Neckar catchment. Initially, the simultaneous floods were identified. The Kendall correlation between the pair sets of peaks was determined to scrutinize the similarities between the simultaneous events. Agglomerative hierarchical clustering tree (AHCT) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) were employed, and obtained clusters were compared and evaluated with the Silhouette verification method. AHCT shows that the Average and Ward algorithms are appropriate to detect reasonable clusters. The Neckar catchment has been divided into three major clusters: the first cluster mainly covers the western part and is bounded by the Black Forest and Swabian Alps. The second cluster is mostly located in the eastern part of the upper Neckar. The third cluster contains the remaining lowland areas of the Neckar basin. The results illustrate that the clusters act relatively as a function of topography, geology, and anthropogenic alterations of the catchment

Why do our rainfall-runoff models keep underestimating the peak flows?

In this paper, the question of how the interpolation of precipitation in space by using various spatial gauge densities affects the rainfall-runoff model discharge if all other input variables are kept constant is investigated. The main focus was on the peak flows. This was done by using a physically based model as the reference with a reconstructed spatially variable precipitation model and a conceptual model calibrated to match the reference model's output as closely as possible. Both models were run with distributed and lumped inputs. Results showed that all considered interpolation methods resulted in the underestimation of the total precipitation volume and that the underestimation was directly proportional to the precipitation amount. More importantly, the underestimation of peaks was very severe for low observation densities and disappeared only for very high-density precipitation observation networks. This result was confirmed by using observed precipitation with different observation densities. Model runoffs showed worse performance for their highest discharges. Using lumped inputs for the models showed deteriorating performance for peak flows as well, even when using simulated precipitation

Development and parameter estimation of snowmelt models using spatial snow-cover observations from MODIS

Given the importance of snow on different land and atmospheric processes, accurate representation of seasonal snow evolution, including distribution and melt volume, is highly imperative to any water resources development trajectories. The limitation of reliable snowmelt estimation in mountainous regions is, however, further exacerbated by data scarcity. This study attempts to develop relatively simple extended degree-day snow models driven by freely available snow-cover images. This approach offers relative simplicity and a plausible alternative to data-intensive models, as well as in situ measurements, and has a wide range of applicability, allowing for immediate verification with point measurements. The methodology employs readily available MODIS composite images to calibrate the snowmelt models on spatial snow distribution in contrast to the traditional snow-water-equivalent-based calibration. The spatial distribution of snow-cover is simulated using different extended degree-day models with parameters calibrated against individual MODIS snow-cover images for cloud-free days or a set of images representing a period within the snow season. The study was carried out in Baden-Württemberg (Germany) and in Switzerland. The simulated snow-cover data show very good agreement with MODIS snow-cover distribution, and the calibrated parameters exhibit relative stability across the time domain. Furthermore, different thresholds that demarcate snow and no-snow pixels for both observed and simulated snow cover were analyzed to evaluate these thresholds' influence on the model performance and identified for the study regions. The melt data from these calibrated snow models were used as standalone inputs to a modified Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning (HBV) without the snow component in all the study catchments to assess the performance of the melt outputs in comparison to a calibrated standard HBV model. The results show an overall increase in Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) performance and a reduction in uncertainty in terms of model performance. This can be attributed to the reduction in the number of parameters available for calibration in the modified HBV and an added reliability of the snow accumulation and melt processes inherent in the MODIS calibrated snow model output. This paper highlights that the calibration using readily available images used in this method allows for a flexible regional calibration of snow-cover distribution in mountainous areas with reasonably accurate precipitation and temperature data and globally available inputs. Likewise, the study concludes that simpler specific alterations to processes contributing to snowmelt can contribute to reliably identify the snow distribution and bring about improvements in hydrological simulations, owing to better representation of the snow processes in snow-dominated regimes