USING RADAR ALTIMETRY TO UPDATE A ROUTING MODEL OF THE ZAMBEZI RIVER BASIN

摘要

Satellite radar altimetry allows for the global monitoringrnof lakes and river levels. However, the widespread usernof altimetry for hydrological studies is limited by therncoarse temporal and spatial resolution provided byrncurrent altimetric missions and the fact that dischargernrather than level is needed for hydrological applications.rnTo overcome these limitations, altimetry river levels canrnbe combined with hydrological modeling in a dataassimilationrnframework.rnThis study focuses on the updating of a river routingrnmodel of the Zambezi using river levels from radarrnaltimetry. A hydrological model of the basin was builtrnto simulate the land phase of the water cycle andrnproduce inflows to a Muskingum routing model. Riverrnaltimetry from the ENVISAT mission was then used tornupdate the storages in the reaches of the Muskingumrnmodel using the Extended Kalman Filter. The methodrnshowed improvements in modeled flows relative to thernbaseline.