HR: 0800h
AN: H21D-1372    [Abstracts]
TI: Estimating river discharge estimation through assimilation of remotely-sensed altimetry into a raster-based hydraulics model
AU: * Clark, E A
EM: lizclark@stanford.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, 202D Wilson Ceramic Lab, Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195-2700 United States
AU: Bates, P
EM: paul.bates@bristol.ac.uk
AF: School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1SS United Kingdom
AU: Wilson, M
EM: Matthew.D.Wilson@exeter.ac.uk
AF: Department of Geography, University of Exeter in Cornwall, Cornwall, TR10 9EZ United Kingdom
AU: Moller, D
EM: Delwyn.K.Moller@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, MS 300-319 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AU: Rodriguez, E
EM: ernesto.rodriguez@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, MS 300-319 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA 91109 United States
AU: Lettenmaier, D P
EM: dennisl@u.washington.edu
AF: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, 202D Wilson Ceramic Lab, Box 352700, Seattle, WA 98195-2700 United States
AU: Alsdorf, D
EM: alsdorf.1@osu.edu
AF: Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210 United States
AB: New methods of measuring surface water elevations from space have the potential to revolutionize the type, frequency, and spatial scale of observations that are available globally. The most effective use of satellite-based methods may be through data assimilation. Hydrology and river hydraulics models forced with surface and/or satellite observations can be used to model surface water profiles, then adjusted as satellite altimetry observations become available, and subsequently fed forward to estimate discharge. We use a synthetic data simulation framework to evaluate the potential for such a strategy. Simulated surface water elevation profiles for a reach of the Ohio River are ingested by the JPL Instrument Simulator to represent observations that would be generated by a dual-sensor Ka-band wide swath altimeter tailored to surface water applications. A satellite mission that would include such an instrument is being considered jointly by the NASA Surface Water Working group and European colleagues. Instrument Simulator errors are intended to be representative of those that would be inherent in observations from such an instrument. We use the Ensemble Kalman filter, with a raster-based river hydraulics model, LISFLOOD-FP, as its dynamical core, to assimilate the synthetic observations. We then compare the results with "open-loop" simulations, which do not include the simulated measurements but are corrupted by errors in LISFLOOD-FP's boundary conditions, to evaluate the implications of satellite retrieval errors and repeat frequency, and spatial resolution.
DE: 1800 HYDROLOGY
DE: 1855 Remote sensing (1640)
DE: 1860 Streamflow
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques: modeling
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005