Durand, M. ., The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA, durand.8@osu.edu
Andreadis, K. ., University of Washington, Seattle, USA, kostas@hydro.washington.edu
Moller, D. ., NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, USA, delwyn.k.moller@jpl.nasa.gov
Alsdorf, D. ., The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA, alsdorf.1@osu.edu
Lettenmaier, D. P., University of Washington, Seattle, USA, dennisl@u.washington.edu

PROFILING ALTIMETRY COMPARED WITH SWATH ALTIMETRY IN THE CONTEXT OF TERRESTRIAL HYDROLOGY DATA ASSIMILATION

Accurate characterization of the hydrologic cycle at local, regional, and global scales is an essential aspect of many crucial science and societal questions. Current methods for characterizing surface water and river discharge are inadequate in many parts of the world because of poor spatial and temporal distributions. A spaceborne synthetic aperture radar swath altimeter, WATER HM’s KaRIN instrument, has been proposed for measuring surface water hydraulics. Is it possible that river discharge could be characterized by solely a profiling altimeter (PA) without the aid of in-situ observations? The swath altimeter (SA) provides a measurement of surface elevation along a swath tangential to the flight path, while the PA provides only a single elevation measurement along the flight path. In this paper, the PA and SA measurements are inter-compared in the context of a data assimilation (DA) system for river discharge estimation. The DA scheme utilizes the LISFLOOD-FP model to obtain a prior estimate of discharge and floodplain inundation and ingests altimeter measurements generated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Instrument Simulator. Observing System Simulation Experiments are performed to examine the relative performance of the PA and SA measurements in the context of the DA scheme for discharge estimation.

Poster presentation

Presentation is given by student: No
Session #:006
Date: 03-03-2008
Time: 17:30 - 19:30