Identification

Title

The role of snowmelt temporal pattern in flood estimation for a small snow-dominated basin in the Sierra Nevada

Abstract

Prior research confirmed the substantial bias from using precipitation-based intensity-duration-frequency curves (PREC-IDF) in design flood estimates and proposed next-generation IDF curves (NG-IDF) that represent both rainfall and snow processes in runoff generation. This study improves the NG-IDF technology for a snow-dominated test basin in the Sierra Nevada. A well-validated physics-based hydrologic model, the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM), is used to continuously simulate snowmelt and streamflow that are used as benchmark data sets to systematically assess the NG-IDF technology. We find that, for the studied small snow-dominated basin, the use of standard rainfall hyetographs in the NG-IDF technology leads to substantial underestimation of design floods. Thus, we propose probabilistic hyetographs that can represent unique patterns of events with different underlying mechanisms. For the test basin where flooding events are generated entirely by snowmelt, we develop a hyetograph that characterizes snowmelt temporal patterns, which greatly improves the performance of NG-IDF technology in design flood estimates. In contrast to the standard rainfall hyetographs characterized by a symmetrically peaked, bell-shaped curve, the snowmelt hyetograph displays a more rapid rise (i.e., greater intensity) and a distinct diurnal pattern influenced by solar energy input. The results also show that the uncertainty of hyetography plays an important role in design flood estimation and can have important implications for future flood projections.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d73f4tqd

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-10-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact