Distributed Hydrologic Modeling: From Research to Operational Forecasting

The NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) is actively conducting research toward operational distributed hydrologic models to improve its products and services to the Nation. Such models attempt to account for the spatial variability of basin features and meteorological forcings at high resolutions. Distributed models are viewed by the NWS as a pathway to provide high space and time resolution information for forecasting hydrologic conditions from flash floods to drought, including water resources forecasting. NWS field offices have been prototyping an operational distributed model since the beginning of 2007. The purpose of this paper is to provide the engineering community an overview of some of the major issues and approaches developed as the NWS moves forward with distributed models using NEXRAD data for operational forecasting.