INTEGRATED HYDROMETEOROLOGICAL PREDICTIONS WITH THE FULLY-COUPLED WRF-HYDRO MODELING SYSTEM

Prediction of heavy rainfall and flash flooding remains as a critical hydrometeorological challenge and requires improved understanding of the linkages between atmospheric and land surface processes. Streamflow prediction skill is intrinsically liked to quantitative precipitation forecast skill, which emphasizes the need to produce mesoscale predictions of high fidelity. However, in many cases land surface parameters can also exert significant control on the runoff response to heavy rainfall and on the formation or localization of heavy rainfall as well. A new generation of integrated atmospheric-hydrologic modeling systems is emerging from different groups around the world to meet the challenge of integrated water cycle predictions. In this talk the community WRF-Hydro modeling system will be presented. After reviewing the architectural features of the system short-term forecasting and regional hydroclimate prediction applications of the model will be presented. In these applications, analyses will focus on the strengths and weaknesses of conducting fully-coupled prediction experiments versus experiments where atmospheric and terrestrial hydrologic model components are run separately without two-way interactions. Issues related to experimental design of fully-coupled model prediction experiments will also be discussed as will issues related to computational performance.