Abstract
Abstract. Rainfall-runoff models are common tools for river discharge estimation in the field of hydrology. In ungauged basins, the dependence on observed river discharge data for calibration restricts applications of rainfall-runoff models. The strong correlation between quantities of river cross-sectional water surface width obtained from remote sensing and corresponding in situ gauged river discharge has been verified by many researchers. In this study, a calibration scheme of rainfall-runoff models based on satellite observations of river width at basin outlet is illustrated. One distinct advantage is that this calibration is independent of river discharge information. The at-a-station hydraulic geometry is implemented to facilitate shifting the calibration objective from river discharge to river width. The generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) is applied to model calibration and uncertainty analysis. The calibration scheme is demonstrated through a case study for simulating river discharge at Pakse in the Mekong Basin. The effectiveness of the calibration scheme and uncertainties associated with utilization of river width observations from space are examined from model input-state-output behaviour, capability of reproducing river discharge and posterior parameter distribution. The results indicate that the satellite observation of the river width is a competent surrogate of observed discharge for the calibration of rainfall-runoff model at Pakse and the proposed method has the potential for improving reliability of river discharge estimation in basins without any discharge gauging.
Highlights
As a major link between the continents and the oceans, river discharge is an important component in the global hydrologic and biochemical cycles
Based on at-a-station hydraulic geometry relation, simulated discharge by rainfallrunoff model is converted into river width at basin outlet
The calibration objective is shifted into minimizing the difference between river widths observed from space and simulated widths by tuning parameters of rainfall-runoff model and at-a-station hydraulic geometry relation simultaneously
Summary
As a major link between the continents and the oceans, river discharge is an important component in the global hydrologic and biochemical cycles. It provides essential information for many scientific researches and engineering tasks associated with water resource management and flood hazard prevention. There is a consensus that the current monitoring networks can not detect the complexity of variations in surface water systems adequately (Alsdorf et al, 2007) Nethertheless, these limited in situ networks and access to river discharge information have been reducing in the past decades (Vorosmarty et al, 2001). The empirical rating curves are single-variable relations (e.g., Smith et al, 1995; Zhang et al, 2004; Smith and Pavelsky, 2008; Kouraev et al, 2004; Coe and Birkett, 2004) or multivariate relations (e.g., Smith et al, 1996; Bjerklie et al, 2005; Bjerklie, 2007), in which either river width or water surface elevation is indispensable for scaling
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