Data collected by the C band ERS-2 wind scatterometer (EScat), the Ku band ADEOS-1 NASA scatterometer (NSCAT), and the Ku band SeaWinds on QuikScat (QSCAT) satellite instruments are used to illustrate spatiotemporal variability in snow accumulation on the Greenland ice sheet. Microwave radar backscatter images of Greenland are derived using the scatterometer image reconstruction (SIR) method at...

The Tizinafu watershed has a complex mountainous terrain in the western Kunlun Mountains; little study has been done on the spatial and temporal characteristics of snow cover in the region. Daily snow cover data of 10 hydrological years (October 2002 to September 2012) in the watershed were generated by combining MODIS Terra (MOD10A1) and Aqua (MYD10A1) snow cover products and employing a nine-...

Flooding is projected to increase with climate change in many parts of the world. Floods in cold regions are commonly a result of snowmelt during the spring break-up. The peak river flow (Qpeak) for the Mackenzie River, located in northwest Canada, is modelled using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite observations. Compared with the observed Qpeak at a downstream hydro...

This article examines the role of climatic and hydrological variability in assessing the cumulative risk of flood events in Poland over a T-year period. In a broad sense flood-risk estimation combines a frequency analysis of extreme hydrological phenomena with an evaluation of flood-induced damages. The damage from floods depends on the critical values of the river discharges. The probabilistic...

The fundamental assumption of flood frequency analysis is that samples are generated by the same generation mechanism (FGM). However, events usually triggered interaction meteorological factors and watershed properties, which results in different FMGs. To solve this problem, researchers have put forward traditional two-component mixture distributions (TCMD-T) without clearly linking each compon...

This paper explores the potential for seasonal prediction of hydrological variables that are potentially useful for reservoir operation of the Three Gorges Dam, China. The seasonal flow of the primary inflow season and the peak annual flow are investigated at Yichang hydrological station, a proxy for inflows to the Three Gorges Dam. Building on literature and diagnostic results, a prediction mo...

Evaluating and improving snow models and outflow predictions for hydrological applications is hindered by the lack of continuous data on bulk volumetric liquid water content (θw) and storage capacity of the melting snowpack. The combination of upward looking ground-penetrating radar and conventional snow height sensors enable continuous, nondestructive determinations of θw in natural snow cover...