Satellite inspired hydrology in an uncertain future: a H SAF and HEPEX workshop

Since 2004, HEPEX (Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment) has been fostering a community of researchers and practitioners around the world. The mission is still to establish a more integrated view of hydrological forecasting, where data assimilation, hydro-meteorological modelling chains, pre- and post-processing techniques, expert knowledge, participatory co-evolution of knowledge and...

This study investigates the capability of LDAS-Monde global offline LDAS to monitor and forecast the impact of extreme events on Land Surface Variables (LSVs). LDAS-Monde is driven by ERA-5 atmospheric forcing from ECMWF and is able to ingest information from satellite-derived surface soil moisture (SSM) and leaf area index (LAI) observations to constrain the ISBA land surface model.
A global...

The main objective of this study is to investigate how innovative satellite earth observation techniques that allow for the estimation of soil moisture and the mapping of flood extents can help in reducing errors and uncertainties in conceptual hydro-meteorological modelling especially in ungauged areas where potentially no or limited runoff records are available. A spatially distributed...

Floods are the most frequent and costliest natural disasters worldwide. The potentiality of the images provided by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems for near real-time flood mapping was demonstrated by several past studies. Nowadays, scientific methods for daily automatically detection and identification of flood area or, more generally, areas where standing water is present from SAR data...

The measurement of precipitation across the Earth’s surface is complex due to the vagaries in the occurrence and intensity of precipitation, together with the variations in the temporal and spatial distribution of precipitation across the global. The physical nature of precipitation necessitates that the observation, sampling and reporting of precipitation is adequate for the resulting end...

The talk will review the current status of satellite and surface networks capable of providing precipitation with high space/time resolution with a view towards the future. While ground based radar networks continue to see systematic although measured progress, there will be a rapid increase in satellite capabilities both in terms of microwave sensors made possible by new Cube- and MicroSat...

The snow depth in the world’s mountains ranks among the most uncertain variables in hydrology. Estimates from the interpolation of local measurements are unrealistic where they are sparse, atmospheric models poorly estimate snowfall, and current snow remote sensing observations have inherent limitations. Yet, accurate snow depth estimates are critically needed to provide information on the...

The very scales at which data may be required and the accessibility of sampling points quickly renders certain direct measurements impractical e.g., changes in land cover, sea surface temperature, snow in mountains, etc. Satellite-derived products are a valuable source of such data and overcomes the large spatial extent limitations. The data is sometimes at a reasonable temporal resolution as...

The Mediterranean region is often impacted by heavy precipitation events, responsible for damages and sometimes casualties. Because of its peculiar geographical characteristics, ground-based observations (e.g. raingauges and radars) cannot be fully exploited for the monitoring, characterization and forecasting of severe events, in particular during their offshore development. Therefore in the...