Abstract
Soil Moisture (SM) plays a vital role in the hydrologic cycle at watershed scale by influencing the partitioning of precipitation into infiltration, runoff, and evapotranspiration. Therefore, SM assimilation into rainfall-runoff models is considered a way to enhance their performance. Knowing if a storm event is occurring in dry or wet soil conditions means understanding if it may trigger or not a potentially hazardous flood event. Considering the scarcity of in situ SM records, satellite SM observations represent a reliable input for improving hydrologic model predictions. In this study, we assess whether the assimilation of satellite SM observations can enhance the water level simulations of an operational early warning system implemented in Uruguay for Durazno city. In particular, the possible improvement is evaluated taking into account the assimilation of SM retrievals from the Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT). According to the results, an improvement higher than 100% was registered for peak level, and an enhancement higher than 30% was obtained for peak time.
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Narbondo, S., Gorgoglione, A., Chreties, C. (2021). Improving the Performance of an Operational Flood Early Warning System with the Assimilation of Satellite-Soil-Moisture Data. In: Gervasi, O., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2021. ICCSA 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12955. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87007-2_3
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