Hydrometdss

Vituki Environmnetal Protection and Water Management Research Institute and Vituki Consult, Budapest

Vituki Environmnetal Protection and Water Management Research Institute and Vituki Consult, Budapest

May 16, 2008

Dr. Peter Bakony, Director Scientific and International Affairs, Vituki, and Drs. Gabor Balant, Maria Szomolanyi, and Sandor Szel, Vituki Consult met with me to discuss WaterNet and their research and applications. Vituki Consult has many varied projects that range from environmental monitoring and hydraulic measurements to numerical modeling and prediction, and water and environmental management. The Vituki team expressed interest in WaterNet and becoming members of our Community of Practice. They will review our web pages and join our CoP as it evolves. Their interests include detailed soil moisture estimates and modeling forecasts, precipitation and temperature forecasts, climate variability and change studies related to water supplies of the Danube, drought monitoring and prediction, and flood prediction.

WaterNet Danubian Hydrologic Forecasting Paper

AGU FAll Assembly Paper: 

24^th Conference of the Danubian Countries on Hydrologic Forecasting and Basis of Water Management in Bled, Slovenia 2-4 June 2008

We presented a paper on WaterNet showing applications from GLDAS in the DanubianBasin including daily SWE, QPE, Runoff, and Soil Moisture; and invited members of the Danubian research and water management decision-making community to join our WaterNet Community of Practice and partner in developing the European Candidate Solution Report.Over 220 representatives from 21 countries from Germany in the headwaters to Bulgaria at the mouth of the Danube including the UK and US participated in the meetings (CDCHFBWM).Many university students and professors, research and management agencies presented papers on topics from climate change impacts on the Danube to flash flood prediction, drought forecasting, and ecological aspects of Danube flows.Many of these topics fell into the 12 National Applications themes of NASA.

Our paper entitled “WaterNet: the NASA water cycle solutions network – Danubian Regional Applications” by Matthews, Brilly, Kobold, Zagar, and Houser reviewed the philosophy behind WaterNet and NASA’s solutions networks, and then presented results from GLDAS over the region focusing on the Alps, Carpathian Mountains and Hungarian Plain, and the mountains of Montenagro.Results from the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) model simulations of the 18 September 2007 flash flood in Slovenia were compared with GLDAS and observations indicating the need for high resolution GLDAS modeling.The value of GLDAS soil moisture analyses for drought monitoring was demonstrated.This 15 page paper is available on the conference proceedings CD, from the FGG, University of Ljubljanaand on line in Topic 6: Developments in Hydrology.

New potential collaborators for WaterNet include the Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service(DHMZ), Zagreb;University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences(BOKU), Vienna; Bavarian Environmental Agency (BEA), Munich; University of Belgrade, Serbia; VITAKU Consult, Hungary; Academy of Sciences and Arts of Vojvodina (VANU), Serbia; Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Research Institute (HRI), Kiev; Research Institute for Fisheries, Aquaculture and Irrigation, Hungary; University of Worcester (ASGA), UK.

CSR Proposal to NSPIRES

Summer CSR Proposal to NSPIRES Call, CoP Development and AGU Paper for Fall 2008 Assembly

The summer in Colorado passed quickly as we concluded year 2 of our 3-year WaterNet project. WE completed our annual report to WaterNet and submitted a multi-author collaborative proposal to NASA entitled:

Enhanced Water Resources and Disaster Management Decision Support Systems in Europe

By

Improved Analysis and Forecasting of Snowpack, Avalanches, Runoff, Floods, Debris Flows and Drought using High Resolution Multi-Sensor Data Assimilation, Atmospheric and Land Surface Models in the Alps of Europe and Region of Southeastern Europe

Investigators:Mitja Brilly2, Gregor Gregoric3, Janez Polajnar3, Mira Kobold3, Mark Zagar3, 

Helmut Knoblauch4, Michael Staudinger5, Susanne Mecklenburg7, Michael Lehning9, Juerg Schweizer9, 

Gabor Balint10 , Ivan Cacic11, George Huffman, Paul Houser1, Debbie Belvedere1, and Dave Matthews6

Proposal Summary

European hydrometeorological services and research centers are faced with increasing challenges from extremes of weather and climate that require significant investments in new technology and better utilization of existing human and natural resources to provide improved forecasts.Major advances in remote sensing, observation networks, data assimilation, numerical modeling, and communications continue to improve our ability to disseminate information to decision-makers and stake holders. This proposal addresses the Water Management and Disaster Management applications areas and identifies: 1) NASA Earth Science Results (ESRs) that will be used to fill gaps in current technologies, and 2) key research and decision-maker teams; and then develops a set of solutions through focused applied research and integration of ESRs into decision support tools (DSTs).These DSTs have many years of baseline data that quantify their accuracy and reliability.The end-user water and emergency management entities also have extensive records of their decisions and impacts.

Our approach to meeting the DECISIONS objective of demonstrating value added to decision-making is to engage the responsible agencies and stake holders at the initiation of the project.Our relationship with these agencies was established in NASA’s WaterNet – NASA Water Cycle Solutions Network Community of Practice in Europe, which has evolved over the past 2 years. One leading partner is the Environmental Agency of the Republic of Slovenia (EARS[MM1]) which has the responsibility of issuing flood alerts, along with issuing seasonal water supply forecasts and snowmelt runoff forecasts.Other agencies like Central Austrian Meteorological Agancy (ZAMG), Croatian Meteorological Agency DHMZ, Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Vituki Consult, and other European forecast centers provide similar services. EARS coordinates the Drought Management Center for Southeastern Europe (DMCSEE).DMCSEE is a cooperative World Meteorological Organization effort of 11 southeastern European countries from Slovenia to Turkey that is developing drought management capabilities for the region.The primary NASA ESRs used here are products from the Hydrologic Sciences Branch, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, Land Information System’s (LIS) Land Surface Models (LSM), the SPoRT,CREW , and European Space Agency (ESA) results will drive decision support tools (DSTs) and systems. Remote sensing data from MODIS, SMOS, SMAP and related WRF-LIS data assimilation and land surface modeling outputs of soil moisture, snow water equivalent, temperature and rates of temperature change, snow melting and resulting runoff will be used as inputs for the avalanche and debris flow models including ALPINE-3D.They will be integrated into the European Commission’s Joint Research Center’s (JRC) natural hazards DSTs, and Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research’s (SLF) public warning systems for avalanches and debris flows and alpine floods.These ESRs will be used in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission sponsored water management projects to provide solutions for improved prediction of water supplies and stream flow, and droughts and floods, and snow avalanches in the major river basins serviced by EARS, ZAMG, SLF, Vituki Consult, and other Danubian Basin forecast centers. Results from this project will be of mutual benefit to European and American decision-makers and scientists.This proposal stems from Candidate Solution Report (CSR) entitled “Improved Analysis and Forecasting of Snowpack, Avalanches, Runoff, Floods, Debris Flows and Drought using High Resolution Multi-Sensor Data Assimilation, Atmospheric and Land Surface Models in the Alps of Europe and Region of Southeastern Europe” that evolved through the WaterNet – NASA Water Cycle Solutions Network Community of Practice in Europe.