Potential of soil moisture observations in flood modelling: Estimating initial conditions and correcting rainfall |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands;2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA;1. Laboratory of Hydrology and Water Management, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium;2. Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA;3. Centre d''Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère, Toulouse, France;4. European Space Agency, Noordwijk, The Netherlands;5. Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Victoria, Australia;6. Agrosphere (IBG-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany;7. Land Surface Hydrology Group, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA;8. Hydrological Sciences Branch, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA |
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| Abstract: | Rainfall runoff (RR) models are fundamental tools for reducing flood hazards. Although several studies have highlighted the potential of soil moisture (SM) observations to improve flood modelling, much research has still to be done for fully exploiting the evident connection between SM and runoff. As a way of example, improving the quality of forcing data, i.e. rainfall observations, may have a great benefit in flood simulation. Such data are the main hydrological forcing of classical RR models but may suffer from poor quality and record interruption issues. This study explores the potential of using SM observations to improve rainfall observations and set a reliable initial wetness condition of the catchment for improving the capability in flood modelling. In particular, a RR model, which incorporates SM for its initialization, and an algorithm for rainfall estimation from SM observations are coupled using a simple integration method. The study carried out at the Valescure experimental catchment (France) demonstrates the high information content retained by SM for RR transformation, thus giving new possibilities for improving hydrological applications. Results show that an appropriate configuration of the two models allows obtaining improvement in flood simulation up to 15% in mean and 34% in median Nash Sutcliffe performances as well as a reduction of the median error in volume and on peak discharge of about 30% and 15%, respectively. |
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| Keywords: | Soil moisture Floods Rainfall |
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