Progress in variable resolution, global domain, vector river-lake network routing model

Abstract:

Recently developed high-resolution hydrogeography data including river courses, catchments and lakes, provide an opportunity to improve accuracy of river and lake representation in river transport modeling. We present our recent progress on global river-lake routing modeling using multi-scale global hydrography data based on MERIT Hydro based hydrography data along with hydroLAKES data. Major modeling efforts consist of river-lake network topology construction, river network domain decomposition for parallel computing, and network aggregation based on pfafstetter coding system. We perform off-line global river flow simulations with the developed river-lake networks, forced by several runoff inputs generated by different land surface models, to investigate sources of difference in discharge estimates among the competing modeling strategies (runoff input, network scale, and with/without lakes) at various time scales and basin scales. With mind that our ultimate goal is to couple vector river-lake model with Earth System model, we also compare the river discharges with the simulations from the current gridded river model coupled with Earth System model.