Abstract
Floods not only provide a large amount of water resources, but they also cause serious disasters. Although there have been numerous hydrological studies on flood processes, most of these investigations were based on rainfall-type floods in plain areas. Few studies have examined high temporal resolution snowmelt floods in high-altitude mountainous areas. The Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is a typical semi-distributed, hydrological model widely used in runoff and water quality simulations. The degree-day factor method used in SWAT utilizes only the average daily temperature as the criterion of snow melting and ignores the influence of accumulated temperature. Therefore, the influence of accumulated temperature on snowmelt was added by increasing the discriminating conditions of rain and snow, making that more suitable for the simulation of snowmelt processes in high-altitude mountainous areas. On the basis of the daily scale, the simulation of the flood process was modeled on an hourly scale. This research compared the results before and after the modification and revealed that the peak error decreased by 77% and the time error was reduced from ±11 h to ±1 h. This study provides an important reference for flood simulation and forecasting in mountainous areas.
Highlights
Flooding is one of the most common and feared natural disasters around the world
On the basis of the snowfall and melting temperatures in the original model, the accumulated temperature method was applied for the accumulated temperature range
The Soil Conservation Service (SCS) runoff curve number (CN2), the threshold depth of water in the shallow aquifer required for return flow to occur (GWQMN), the groundwater delay (GW_DELAY) and the initial depth of water in the shallow aquifer (SHALLST), precipitation lapse rate (PLAPS), and effective hydraulic conductivity in tributary channel alluvium (CH_K1) varied by more than three during the calibration process, which may have been due to the difference in the hydrological simulation process between the sub-daily model and the daily model
Summary
Flooding is one of the most common and feared natural disasters around the world. The losses caused by floods account for approximately 40% of the losses of all natural disasters [1]. In high-altitude, mountainous areas, perennial snow cover and glacier cover often lead to snowmelt and mixed floods [8]. Under the influence of climate change and an increasing population, the losses and hazards caused by mountain torrents are becoming increasingly prominent and serious. Given this situation, it is an urgent responsibility of government departments to ensure the safety of residents
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