Hydrometeorology: Forecasting and Applications

An award-winning text on the latest operational hydrometeorological forecasting and warning techniques for flood, drought, reservoir, water resources and water quality applications.  Hydrometeorology: Forecasting and Applications is the latest edition of this award-winning book first published in 2010. It provides an introduction to the latest developments in this area for practicing engineers and scientists and examples of operational systems, including from the USA, UK, the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Nepal. It also provides useful background for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in areas such as engineering, earth sciences, environmental sciences, geography, meteorology and hydrology. Practical applications include flood warning, drought early warning, irrigation scheduling, hydropower generation, water pollution and water supply operations. Throughout, there is a focus on end-to-end warning systems, forecast uncertainty and risk-based and impact-based approaches. Each chapter now concludes with a summary of key points regarding current research themes and the extensive sets of references that were a feature of previous editions have been revised and updated. The first part considers meteorological and hydrological monitoring and forecasting techniques and approaches to issuing warnings and alerts. Hydrological forecasting topics include rainfall-runoff models, flow routing and data assimilation, forecast verification and ensemble techniques. Additional topics in this new edition include the role of low cost monitoring, citizen science and social media in monitoring and early warning applications. The text on weather radar, satellite precipitation estimates, hydrometry, catchment monitoring, numerical weather prediction, demand forecasting, uncertainty estimation and warning dissemination has been updated. The second part considers flood, drought, reservoir, water quality and water resources applications. As before, riverine and flash flood forecasts are considered separately including flash flood guidance techniques, community based flood warning systems and methods for providing early warnings of debris flows, surface water flooding and ice jam floods. Other applications include famine and drought early warning systems, reservoir and tidal barrier operations, bathing water quality alerts, harmful algal bloom prediction and seasonal flow forecasting. Land surface and global hydrological models are now discussed in more detail, including the opportunities from ‘Big Data’ and artificial intelligence. A new chapter on climate change prediction discusses approaches to assessing potential hydrological impacts and improving modelling techniques, including expert elicitation exercises and the use of experimental catchments.   “There are few books that have ever attempted to discuss all aspects of hydrometeorology in one volume. This one does so.”                             (from a review of the 1st edition in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society)