Development of a real time streamflow monitoring system for the Indian sub-continental basins

Abstract:

Real-time streamflow monitoring is essential in the Indian sub-continental river basins as a large population is affected by floods. Moreover, streamflow monitoring may help in managing the water resources in the agriculture dominated region. In the Indian sub-continental basins, it is challenging to obtain the real time information of streamflow, which is valuable for reservoir operations, water management, and flood forecasts. We setup the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrological model at daily temporal resolution and 0.25◦ spatial resolution using the bias corrected satellite precipitation product from the Tropical rainfall Measurement Mission Real Time (TRMM-3B42RTV7) and bias corrected temperature product from the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS), version 2. Near-real-time precipitation and temperatures are bias corrected using the historic precipitation and temperature data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD). Moreover, we evaluated data assimilation approaches to improve the real-time monitoring of streamflow in the sub-continental basins.