Effect of Monthly Variation of Near-Surface Lapse Rate on Snowmelt Runoff Simulation in Eastern Himalayas
Most of the temperature-based studies in the Himalayan basins used a constant value of 0.65 °C/100 m as the near-surface lapse rate parameter. However, studies on lapse rate have established that it varies with location as well as with the time of the yea
- PDF / 947,635 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 94 Downloads / 209 Views
Effect of Monthly Variation of Near-Surface Lapse Rate on Snowmelt Runoff Simulation in Eastern Himalayas Minotshing Maza, Liza G. Kiba, Arnab Bandyopadhyay, and Aditi Bhadra
Abstract Most of the temperature-based studies in the Himalayan basins used a constant value of 0.65 °C/100 m as the near-surface lapse rate parameter. However, studies on lapse rate have established that it varies with location as well as with the time of the year. In this study, three scenarios were tested: (i) constant lapse rate of 0.65 °C/100 m; (ii) constant lapse rate specific to Eastern Himalayas; and (iii) monthly varying lapse rate specific to Eastern Himalayas. It was found that the snowmelt model WinSRM captured the observed hydrograph more efficiently when constant lapse rate of 0.5 °C/100 m (specifically determined for Eastern Himalayas from observed temperature data) was used compared to monthly varied lapse rate or constant lapse rate of 0.65 °C/100 m. Based on the results obtained, a constant near-surface lapse rate of 0.5 °C/100 m is recommended for the temperature-index based snowmelt models in the Eastern Himalayas. Keywords WinSRM · Lapse rate · Snowmelt runoff modelling · Eastern Himalayas
13.1 Introduction The Himalaya, which is in the northern part of the Indian Peninsula, is the abode of eternal snows, from which the rivers of the Ganga, the Indus and the Brahmaputra originate. These river systems, besides supplying water for urban and rural household uses, generate millions of kilowatts of power and are also extensively used for irrigating millions of hectares of agricultural land. Therefore, monitoring the distribution of snow in mountainous basins is necessary for accurate streamflow simulation which is of great importance for optimal water resources planning and management, and climate change studies. Significant amount of runoff is generated from both M. Maza (B) · L. G. Kiba · A. Bandyopadhyay · A. Bhadra Department of Agricultural Engineering, North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Nirjuli (Itanagar), Arunachal Pradesh 791109, India e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Pandey et al. (eds.), Water Management and Water Governance, Water Science and Technology Library 96, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58051-3_13
189
190
M. Maza et al.
melting of ice and snow but due to lack of detailed ground truth observations, their relative contribution to runoff is difficult to quantify (Wulf et al. 2016). Many conceptual and physically based hydrological models are used to explore, quantify and understand the processes associated with the discharge. The runoff generated from ice and snow is commonly estimated using either surface energy balance (Anderson 1976) or temperature-index models (Rango and Martinec 1981; Lang and Braun 1990; Rulin et al. 2008). Temperature-index models are commonly used for snowmelt modelling studies owing to easy accessibility to air temperature data and good pe
Data Loading...
