| 1. |
- Guerrero, Jose-Luis, et al.
(författare)
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Temporal variability in stage-discharge relationships
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Hydrology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0022-1694 .- 1879-2707. ; 446, s. 90-102
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although discharge estimations are central for water management and hydropower, there are few studies on the variability and uncertainty of their basis; deriving discharge from stage heights through the use of a rating curve that depends on riverbed geometry. A large fraction of the world's river-discharge stations are presumably located in alluvial channels where riverbed characteristics may change over time because of erosion and sedimentation. This study was conducted to analyse and quantify the dynamic relationship between stage and discharge and to determine to what degree currently used methods are able to account for such variability. The study was carried out for six hydrometric stations in the upper Choluteca River basin, Honduras, where a set of unusually frequent stage-discharge data are available. The temporal variability and the uncertainty of the rating curve and its parameters were analysed through a Monte Carlo (MC) analysis on a moving window of data using the Generalised Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) methodology. Acceptable ranges for the values of the rating-curve parameters were determined from riverbed surveys at the six stations, and the sampling space was constrained according to those ranges, using three-dimensional alpha shapes. Temporal variability was analysed in three ways: (i) with annually updated rating curves (simulating Honduran practices), (ii) a rating curve for each time window, and (iii) a smoothed, continuous dynamic rating curve derived from the MC analysis. The temporal variability of the rating parameters translated into a high rating-curve variability. The variability could turn out as increasing or decreasing trends and/or cyclic behaviour. There was a tendency at all stations to a seasonal variability. The discharge at a given stage could vary by a factor of two or more. The quotient in discharge volumes estimated from dynamic and static rating curves varied between 0.5 and 1.5. The difference between discharge volumes derived from static and dynamic curves was largest for sub-daily ratings but stayed large also for monthly and yearly totals. The relative uncertainty was largest for low flows but it was considerable also for intermediate and large flows. The standard procedure of adjusting rating curves when calculated and observed discharge differ by more than 5% would have required continuously updated rating curves at the studied locations. We believe that these findings can be applicable to many other discharge stations around the globe.
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| 2. |
- Kauffeldt, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Disinformative data in large-scale hydrological modelling
- 2013
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Ingår i: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1027-5606 .- 1607-7938. ; 17:7, s. 2845-2857
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Large-scale hydrological modelling has become an important tool for the study of global and regional water resources, climate impacts, and water-resources management. However, modelling efforts over large spatial domains are fraught with problems of data scarcity, uncertainties and inconsistencies between model forcing and evaluation data. Model-independent methods to screen and analyse data for such problems are needed. This study aimed at identifying data inconsistencies in global datasets using a pre-modelling analysis, inconsistencies that can be disinformative for subsequent modelling. The consistency between (i) basin areas for different hydrographic datasets, and (ii) between climate data (precipitation and potential evaporation) and discharge data, was examined in terms of how well basin areas were represented in the flow networks and the possibility of water-balance closure. It was found that (i) most basins could be well represented in both gridded basin delineations and polygon-based ones, but some basins exhibited large area discrepancies between flow-network datasets and archived basin areas, (ii) basins exhibiting too-high runoff coefficients were abundant in areas where precipitation data were likely affected by snow undercatch, and (iii) the occurrence of basins exhibiting losses exceeding the potential-evaporation limit was strongly dependent on the potential-evaporation data, both in terms of numbers and geographical distribution. Some inconsistencies may be resolved by considering subgrid variability in climate data, surface-dependent potential-evaporation estimates, etc., but further studies are needed to determine the reasons for the inconsistencies found. Our results emphasise the need for pre-modelling data analysis to identify dataset inconsistencies as an important first step in any large-scale study. Applying data-screening methods before modelling should also increase our chances to draw robust conclusions from subsequent model simulations.
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| 3. |
- Kizza, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Estimating areal rainfall over Lake Victoria and its basin using ground-based and satellite data
- 2012
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Ingår i: Journal of Hydrology. - : Elsevier. - 0022-1694 .- 1879-2707. ; 464, s. 401-411
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A gridded monthly rainfall dataset having a spatial resolution of 2 km and covering the period 1960–2004 was derived for the Lake Victoria basin. The lake and its basin support more than 30 million people and also contribute substantially to the River Nile flow. The major challenge in the estimation of the Lake Victoria water balance is the estimation of the rainfall over the lake, which is further complicated by the varying quality and spatial coverage of rain-gauge data in the basin. In this study, these problems were addressed by using rain-gauge data for 315 stations around the basin and satellite-derived precipitation data from two products to derive a monthly precipitation dataset for the entire basin, including the lake. First, the rain-gauge data were quality controlled. Thereafter short gaps were filled in the daily data series which resulted in 9,429 additional months of data. Two spatial interpolation methods were used for generating the gridded rainfall dataset and the universal kriging method performed slightly better than the inverse distance weighting method. The enhancement of rainfall over the lake surface was addressed by estimating a relationship between rain-gauge and satellite data. Two satellite rainfall products, TRMM 3B43 and PERSIANN were compared to the interpolated monthly rain-gauge data for the land part of the basin. The bias in the TRMM 3B43 rainfall estimates was higher than the bias for PERSIANN but its correlation was higher with a better representation of the intra-annual variability. The TRMM 3B43 product showed an enhancement of lake rainfall over basin rainfall of 33% while the PERSIANN product gave a much higher enhancement of up to 85%.
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| 4. |
- Westerberg, Ida K., et al.
(författare)
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Regional water balance modelling using flow-duration curves with observational uncertainties
- 2014
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Ingår i: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1027-5606 .- 1607-7938. ; 18:8, s. 2993-3013
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Robust and reliable water-resource mapping in ungauged basins requires estimation of the uncertainties in the hydrologic model, the regionalisation method, and the observational data. In this study we investigated the use of regionalised flow-duration curves (FDCs) for constraining model predictive uncertainty, while accounting for all these uncertainty sources. A water balance model was applied to 36 basins in Central America using regionally and globally available precipitation, climate and discharge data that were screened for inconsistencies. A rating-curve analysis for 35 Honduran discharge stations was used to estimate discharge uncertainty for the region, and the consistency of the model forcing and evaluation data was analysed using two different screening methods. FDCs with uncertainty bounds were calculated for each basin, accounting for both discharge uncertainty and, in many cases, uncertainty stemming from the use of short time series, potentially not representative for the modelling period. These uncertain FDCs were then used to regionalise a FDC for each basin, treating it as ungauged in a cross-evaluation, and this regionalised FDC was used to constrain the uncertainty in the model predictions for the basin. There was a clear relationship between the performance of the local model calibration and the degree of data set consistency - with many basins with inconsistent data lacking behavioural simulations (i.e. simulations within predefined limits around the observed FDC) and the basins with the highest data set consistency also having the highest simulation reliability. For the basins where the regionalisation of the FDCs worked best, the uncertainty bounds for the regionalised simulations were only slightly wider than those for a local model calibration. The predicted uncertainty was greater for basins where the result of the FDC regionalisation was more uncertain, but the regionalised simulations still had a high reliability compared to the locally calibrated simulations and often encompassed them. The regionalised FDCs were found to be useful on their own as a basic signature constraint; however, additional regionalised signatures could further constrain the uncertainty in the predictions and may increase the robustness to severe data inconsistencies, which are difficult to detect for ungauged basins.
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| 5. |
- Westerberg, Ida, et al.
(författare)
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Stage-discharge uncertainty derived with a non-stationary rating curve in the Choluteca River, Honduras
- 2011
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Ingår i: Hydrological Processes. - 0885-6087 .- 1099-1085. ; 25:4, s. 603-613
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Uncertainty in discharge data must be critically assessed before data can be used in, e. g. water resources estimation or hydrological modelling. In the alluvial Choluteca River in Honduras, the river-bed characteristics change over time as fill, scour and other processes occur in the channel, leading to a non-stationary stage-discharge relationship and difficulties in deriving consistent rating curves. Few studies have investigated the uncertainties related to non-stationarity in the stage-discharge relationship. We calculated discharge and the associated uncertainty with a weighted fuzzy regression of rating curves applied within a moving time window, based on estimated uncertainties in the observed rating data. An 18-year-long dataset with unusually frequent ratings (1268 in total) was the basis of this study. A large temporal variability in the stage-discharge relationship was found especially for low flows. The time-variable rating curve resulted in discharge estimate differences of -60 to +90% for low flows and +/- 20% for medium to high flows when compared to a constant rating curve. The final estimated uncertainty in discharge was substantial and the uncertainty limits varied between -43 to +73% of the best discharge estimate. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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