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Abstract: Accurate spring flow forecasts, primarily driven by snow accumulation and melt processes, are essential for decision-makers aiming to optimize hydro-electricity production and mitigate potential flood damages in snow-dominated regions. By integrating snowpack data from diverse sources (in-situ, remote sensing, and reanalysis) with modeled snow-related state variables through Data Assimilation (DA), there is the potential to leverage both modeling and observations for more accurate estimation of the resulting spring flow. However, challenges such as the lack of sufficient snow station networks and issues with optical and microwave sensors to provide Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) can hinder progress, particularly in regions with heterogeneous snowpack characteristics. Overcoming these challenges is crucial to realizing the full potential of snow DA in advancing spring flow forecasts. This thesis aims to optimize spring flow forecasting effectiveness using snow DA, where snow-related observations are incorporated into hydrological models. It investigates the best hydrological model structure (a lumped model: HSAMI, and a distributed model: HYDROTEL) for leveraging distributed SWE data provided by SNODAS (SNOw Data Assimilation System) dataset, which serves as the observation. This DA framework is applied on a large, heterogeneous northern Québec watershed (Outardes 4). It does so by updating SWE model states of HYDROTEL and HSAMI using the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) DA method. The simulated spring flow are then compared to observed spring flow data. Another scope of the thesis is to compare two reanalysis products with varying spatial resolutions and SWE representations (SNODAS and ERA5-Land) for improving 1-day spring flow forecasts in HYDROTEL over a smaller southern Québec watershed (Au Saumon). Finally, the thesis assesses the forecasting skill of the optimal model-observation combination over an extended 30-day forecast horizon using various probabilistic and deterministic metrics. The forecasting skills are evaluated in terms of SWE estimations during the snowpack accumulation and melt periods, and their impacts on spring flow. Among the two hydrological models considered (i.e., HYDROTEL and HSAMI), HYDROTEL proves to be a better candidate to unlock the full potential of distributed SNODAS SWE dataset through DA over a large watershed with spatially variable SWE. This is seen by improved 1-day spring flow forecasts metrics over many years (2014-2017). From the observation source point of view, SNODAS DA results in a more consistent 1-day spring flow forecasts compared to ERA5-Land over Au Saumon. However, the improvements in 1-day spring flow forecasts induced by SNODAS DA are comparatively modest over Au Saumon compared to Outardes 4, with NSE changing from 0.44 to 0.45, 0.31 to 0.34, and 0.59 to 0.61 for the 2014-2017 time period. This could be rooted in alignments between the physiographic characteristics of the watershed and the frequency of DA updates. The results obtained from the first two chapters of the thesis provide a snow DA framework with the capability to improve short-term and mid-term SWE forecasts with varying influence over the forecast horizon given the snowpack period considered (i.e., formation and ablation). The improved SWE estimations lead to increased accuracy and better uncertainty representations, as measured by Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE), Relative Bias (RB), and Continuous Ranked Probability Score (CRPS), in spring flow forecasts for the Outardes 4 watershed over the study period (2014-2017).

Accepted: 2024-08-29T17:36:39Z Publisher: Université de Sherbrooke