Long-Range River Discharge Forecasting Using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 145, Issue 7
Abstract
Diarrheal diseases, notably cholera, have been shown to be related to episodic seasonal variability in river discharge, predominantly low flows, in regions where water and sanitation infrastructure are inadequate. Forecasting river discharge in transboundary international basins a few months in advance remains elusive because the necessary geophysical data are unavailable or are not shared with stakeholders. We hypothesized that river discharge in large river basins is directly related to upstream water conditions that lead to generation of high and low flows. Using the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Rivers as an example and Bayesian regressive models, we showed that terrestrial water storage (TWS) anomalies from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) can provide reliable estimates of flows, which are essential hydroclimatic variables for predicting endemic cholera, with an overall accuracy of 70% and up to 60 days in advance, without ancillary ground-based data.
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Data Availability Statement
GRACE satellite data were obtained from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) servers (ftp://podaac-ftp.jpl.nasa.gov/allData/tellus/L3/land_mass/RL05/netcdf/). River discharge data can be requested from Institute of Water Modelling, Dhaka, Bangladesh (Email: [email protected]; phone: 880-288245901). Cholera epidemiological data are available from the weekly bulletin from International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (http://www.icddrb.org/media-centre/weekly-bulletin).
Acknowledgments
This research is in part funded by a project from NASA (Grant No. 80NSSC18K0324).
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 145 • Issue 7 • July 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 18, 2018
Accepted: Nov 7, 2018
Published online: Apr 25, 2019
Published in print: Jul 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Sep 25, 2019
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