water cycle prediction at the regional scale: on the importance of being consistent vincent fortin,...

Water cycle prediction at the regional scale: on the importance of being consistent

Vincent Fortin, Pierre PellerinMeteorological Research Division

Al Pietroniro, André MéthotMeteorological Service of Canada

– April 19, 2023

Canadian Meteorological Centre:more than tomorrow's weather!

– April 19, 2023

Applications of hydrological and hydrodynamic modelling

• Adaptive management of watersheds

• Optimization of hydropower production

• Flood warning

• Search and rescue

• Predicting impacts on habitat of changes in water level

• NWP and land-surface model verification

– April 19, 2023

Coupled modelling system for hydrological prediction

GEMatmospheric

model

– April 19, 2023


GEMatmospheric

model

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

– April 19, 2023


Land-surface scheme(CLASS,

ISBA, SVS)

GEMatmospheric

model

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

– April 19, 2023



ISBA, SVS)

GEMatmospheric

model

WATROUTErouting model

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

– April 19, 2023

CaLDAS:EnKF data assimilation




ISBA, SVS)

GEMatmospheric

model


4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

– April 19, 2023



ISBA, SVS)

GEMatmospheric

model


NEMO modelfor the ocean

and large lakes

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation

4DVAR/EnKFdata

assimilation



– April 19, 2023

Coupled modelling system for hydrological prediction• Components can be run either coupled or offline, with

prescribed forcings


ISBA, SVS)

GEMatmospheric

model


NEMO modelfor the ocean

and large lakes

MESH:Modélisation Environnementale de laSurface et de l'Hydrologie

– April 19, 2023

Why not simply drive surface and hydrology models with observations?

• Required observations are generally not all available

• Forecasting becomes nearly impossible

• Accuracy of short-term forecasts can approach or even surpasses that of observations

– snowfall observations

• Working within an integrated system makes it possible for hydrologists to actively contribute to the improvement of all components

– April 19, 2023

Saskatchewan

NorthernTerritories

Toronto

Central Quebec

It works because weather forecasting is not so difficult• Landscape • Atmosphere

Central Quebec

Toronto

NorthernTerritories

Saskatchewan

– April 19, 2023

Not only is weather forecasting easy, it is improving

– April 19, 2023

Not only is weather forecasting easy, it is improving

• Major improvements to the data assimilation system

• The ISBA land-surface model replaces the force-restore scheme

• Major improvements to the data assimilation system

• The ISBA land-surface model replaces the force-restore scheme

– April 19, 2023

GEM vs reanalysis products

• Many hydrologists already use reanalysis products (NCEP, NARR, MERRA, ERA-40, WATCH, Era-interim)

• For many applications where ~10 years or less of data is required, operational NWP outputs (e.g. GEM) provide higher resolution (up to 2.5 km for GEM HRDPS) and better skill (especially for surface variables)

• For short-term hydrological forecasting applications, past atmospheric forcings are used only to calibrate the hydrological model and obtain initial conditions

– NWP forecasts are required to obtain streamflow forecasts– by using the same data source for model calibration and

forecasting, we can bypass the NWP post-processing step

– April 19, 2023

The Canadian Precipitation Analysis (CaPA) can be used to improve GEM precipitation

• Optimal interpolation technique used to merge gauges, radar and satellite data with a background provided by the GEM NWP model

• Fully automated quality control

• 6-h and 24-h accumulations

• North American domain

• 10 km resolution

• Early (T+1h) and late (T+7h) analyses

• Operational since April 2011 http://weather.gc.ca/analysis

24-h analysis valid 2014-08-15@12Z

– April 19, 2023

Great Lakes / St. Lawrence testbed

• Demonstrate benefits of coupled numerical models

• WMO RFDP proposal in preparation

• Already included in:– Canada/Québec St.

Lawrence Action Plan (SLAP): Environmental prediction working group

– EC/NOAA MOU: close collaboration with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory

Superior

Michigan-Huron

Erie

Ontario

– April 19, 2023

Coupled modelling systemfor the Great Lakes• Configuration used for recently published results

Land-surface schemesCLASS or

ISBAat 15 km

GEM RDPS 15 kmatmospheric model

2 integrations per day


at 15 km

2 km NEMO model for the Great Lakes

UU,VV,TT,HUP0,FB,FI,PR

Q,TQ

RFF,RCH

MESH:

– April 19, 2023

Coupled modelling systemfor the Great Lakes• Configuration to be implemented operationnally

(sorry, no results to show yet):

Land-surface scheme

SVSat 2 km

GEM HRDPS 2.5 kmatmospheric model

4 integrations per day


at 1 km

2 km NEMO model for the Great Lakes

UU,VV,TT,HUP0,FB,FI,PR

Q,TQ

RFF,RCH

MESH:

– April 19, 2023

Predicting net basin suppliesto Lake Superior with GEM+ISBA

• Overlake evaporation(-E)

• Net precipitation (P-E)

• Net basin supplies(NBS=P-E+R)

• Resid: residual calculation of NBS from lake levels obs. and lake outflow

Deacu et al. (2012)J. Hydromet.

World's largest lake by area:- Lake area: 82 000 km²- Watershed: 128 000 km²

– April 19, 2023

Predicting net basin suppliesto the Great Lakes with GEM+ISBA

• REGN: from GEM model outputs at 15km

• GLERL LakeP: assessment by NOAA/GLERL from near-shore obs. of precip., temperature, humidity, wind and streamflow

• Resid: residual calculation from lake levels obs.

Deacu et al. (2012)J. Hydromet.

– April 19, 2023

Simulating Great Lakes physical behaviour using GEM+NEMOWater level change [m] Surface temperature [C] Ice fraction

Surfacecurrrents [m/s]

Surfacetemperature [C]

Dupont et al. (2012) WQRJC

– April 19, 2023

Streamflow simulation for subwatersheds (CLASS LSS)

Haghnegabar et al. (2014), Atmosphere-Ocean

Grand River at Iona, MI (4571 km2)

Black River at Watertown, NY (3000 km2)

(b)

(a)

– April 19, 2023

How did we get there?

• Monitoring activities dedicated to improving the model

• Parsimonious landscape parameterizations

• Coordinated model development

– April 19, 2023

Monitoring activities dedicated to improving the model

Research basins Flux towers

– April 19, 2023

Parsimonious landscape parameterizations, calibrated parameters

• Grouped Response Units (Kouwen et al., 1993)

– identify important landscape features

– within a grid cell, only keep track of areal coverage of each GRU

– assign one parameter set to each GRU

• WATDRAIN hillslope model (Soulis et al., 2011)

– takes slope into account in land-surface, hydrology and atmospheric models

– influences runoff but also soil moisture and evaporation

– April 19, 2023

Coordinated model development

• Working as an integrated team on atmospheric, hydrologic and ocean model development by sharing key components:

– land-surface model– turbulent flux calculations– computing infrastructure

• Using streamflow and water level observations for atmospheric prediction:– to verify NWP forecasts– to tune the water balance of land-surface schemes– eventually, to estimate deep soil moisture

• Assessing the impacts of improvements to one component on the environmental prediction system as a whole

– April 19, 2023

Overlake evaporation prediction

• Deacu, Fortin et al. (2012), Journal of Hydrometeorology

Average latent heat flux, winter 2011 (W/m²)

GEM 15km GEM 10km OAFlux

Lake Superior supplies200

150

100

50

0

W/m²

– April 19, 2023

Conclusions

• At the regional scale, feedbacks to the atmosphere cannot be ignored: if you are using an atmospheric model product for precipitation and you want to close the water balance using a hydrological model, then you should worry about evapotranspiration computed by the atmospheric model as well

• Hydrologists and meteorologists have much to gain by collaborating– high-resolution land-surface modelling and data assimilation systems developed

by the NWP community are evolving and improving quickly– land-surface models used by the NWP community often lack some basic

hydrological processes and need to be calibrated

• Be prepared:– NWP systems already provide forecasts of sufficient quality to drive hydrological

models for both hindcasting and forecasting at the regional scale– NWP systems will soon provide gridded runoff fields of comparable quality– running coupled models is becoming more and more affordable: water resources

engineers will soon be running such systems from their basement!

• Systems like MESH offer a good starting point

water cycle prediction at the regional scale: on the importance of being consistent vincent fortin,...

Documents

data assimilation system

isba landsurface model

coupled modelling system

lhydrologie slide

integrated system

surface et

applications of hydrological

weather forecasting