Flood Forecasting Using Medium-Range Probabilistic Weather Prediction

Following the developments in short- and medium-range weather forecasting over the last decade, recent trends in flood forecasting appear to show a shift from a so-called single solution or ‘best guess’ deterministic approach towards a probabilistic approach based on ensemble techniques. While this probabilistic approach is more or less common practice and well established in the meteorological community, hydrologists now have started to look for ways to interpret and mitigate to end-users the prediction products obtained by combining Ensemble Prediction Systems (EPS) of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models with rainfall-runoff models. This paper presents initial results obtained by combining EPS hindcasts of the global NWP model of the European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) with the large-scale rainfall-runoff model LISFLOOD for two historic flood events, i.e. the river Meuse flood in January 1995 and the river Odra flood in July 1997. Additionally, a possible way to interpret the obtained ensemble based probabilistic stream flow prediction is proposed.

GOUWELEEUW Ben;  THIELEN DEL POZO Jutta;  FRANCHELLO Giovanni;  DE ROO Arie;  BUIZZA R.; 

2006-02-17

European Geosciences Union

JRC32676