Incorporating river routing in the Canadian Regional Climate Model

Abstract

m et al. (1999) discretized 10 major river basins over North America and the discretization of these river basins at the CRCM resolution is shown in Fig. 1. The drainage areas of the major river basins at the CRCM resolution are compared with drainage areas based on 5' discretization of Graham et al. (1999) in Table 1. Table 1: Comparison of drainage areas of river basins discretized at the CRCM resolution with drainage areas based on 5' discretization of Graham et al. (1999). River Basin Drainage area (km ) Percentage Graham et al. CRCM Difference Mississippi 3,218,720 3,228,415 0.30 Mackenzie 1,735,635 1,748,230 0.73 Nelson 1,303,641 1,305,674 0.16 Columbia 1,106,969 1,106,439-0.05 St-Lawrence 1,090,564 1,087,952-0.24 Yukon 884,867 882,128-0.31 Rio Grande* 856,547 149,144-82.59 Colorado* 770,829 616,827-19.98 Churchill 296,190 300,800 1.56 Fraser 262,854 260,419-0.93 *The CRCM drainage areas for Colorado and Rio Grande do not compare well with Graham et al. (1999) va