Quantitative precipitation and river flow predictions over the southwestern United States
Accurate predictions of local precipitation and river flow are crucial in the western US steep terrain and narrow valleys can cause local flooding during short term heavy precipitation. Typical size of hydrologically uniform watersheds within the mountainous part of the western US ranges 10{sup 2} to 10{sup 3} km{sup 2}. Such small watershed size, together with large variations in terrain elevations and a strong dependence of precipitation on terrain elevation, requires a find-resolution and well-localized NWP to improve QPF and river predictions. The most important aspects of accurate QPF and river flow predictions in the western US are: (1) partitioning the total precipitation into rainfall and snowfall, (2) representing hydrologic processes within individual watersheds, and (3) map watershed areas onto the regularly-spaced atmospheric grid model grid. In the following, we present the QPF and river flow calculations by the CARS system during two winter seasons from Nov. 1994 to Apr. 1995.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 448969
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-124322; CONF-9610273-1; ON: DE97050770
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 1996 Fall meeting of the Korean Meteorological Society, Seoul (Korea, Republic of), 24-25 Oct 1996; Other Information: PBD: Sep 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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