Multi-site Disaggregation of Monthly to Daily Streamflow

D. Nagesh Kumar, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, INDIA
Upmanu Lall, Department of Civil Engineering & Utah Water Research Laboratory, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA
Michael Peterson, Keller-Bliesner Engineering, Logan, UT, USA

The paper was submitted to Water Resources Research May 17, 1999.
 
 

Abstract. Streamflow disaggregation is used to preserve statistical attributes of time series across multiple sites and time scales. Several algorithms for spatial disaggregation and for disaggregation of annual to monthly flows are available. However, the disaggregation of monthly to daily or weekly to daily flows remains a challenge. A new algorithm for simultaneously disaggregating monthly flows at a number of sites and daily flows at an index site, to daily flows at a number of sites on a drainage network is presented. The continuity of flow in time across months at each site as well as the inter-site flow pattern is preserved. The disaggregated daily flows at the multiple sites are conditioned on the spatial (across site) pattern of monthly flows at the respective sites. The probability distribution of the vector of disaggregated flows conditional on the multi-site monthly flows is approximated nonparametrically using the k-nearest neighbors of the monthly spatial flow pattern. A constrained optimization problem is solved to adaptively estimate the disaggregated flows in space and time for each such neighborhood. An application to data from a tributary of the Colorado River is used to illustrate the modeling process.
Keywords:  Stochastic Hydrology, Nonparametric Methods, Streamflow
 

The paper can be accessed by downloading the following pdf files
 

Disag.pdf
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