Working Group "Hydrological and Meteorological Modelling"

Research Goal:

To predict the water quantity and quality under different scenarios and understand their effect on ecosystems, human health and regional economies (from the GLOCHAMORE Research Strategy, published by MRI in Dec. 2005).

Contact:

Ricardo Villalba, IANIGLA Argentina

> ricardo@lab.cricyt.edu.ar

Alan Hamlet University of Washington USA

> hamleaf@u.washington.edu

Progress Report

April 2006 to March 2007 

Refined research goal:

• Encourage people and institutions to share their hydrometeorological data.
• Get the crucial elements for the modelling of the hydrological cycles in the Andean basins.
• In the long term: a much better understanding of the Andean hydrology: Snowpack, relationships between snow and runoff glaciers and their contribution to the water cycle; Comparison between hydrometeorological basis.
• Model the hydrological cycles to make projections into the future.
• Raise a political awareness of the importance of modelling.
• Much more hydrological and meteorological information is available on the North American Cordillera than on the South American. The “hydro-met” Cordillera Transect aims at moving the South forward.
• Export the North American expertise, run North American models on South American data (this provides interesting research opportunities).

Background:

The shared database as incentive to contribute data: “Share your data and get access to a vast datapool”. The IPCC data distribution site can serve as an analogy for the hydro-met effort:

http://ipcc-ddc.cru.uea.ac.uk/ddc_climscen.html

Standardized streamflow data, meteorological station data, and various gridded products derived from them that would be suitable for hydrologic modeling efforts could fill a similar role in the Cordillera Transect project. Data sets in a standardized format help reduce the overhead of doing subsequent analysis.

Results of this first period:

IANIGLA is compiling streamflow data of Andean basins in Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia. Streamflow records are important to validate models. So far the effort has been successful in respect to Argentina. In the other two countries it is still a matter of contacting the right institutes and persons who can (and are willing to) provide the data. Most of the streamflow information compiled during the last 3 months (on daily and monthly basis) is already available from the IANIGLA server via ftp protocol. As governmental and private sources of the data want these information to be limited to research purposes, interested persons please contact Ricardo Villalba to access the data. Finally all records should be shared with all scientists participating in the project.

In 2007 the workgroup has started a collection of old photographs from the Southern Andes.

Another major task is the installation of new meteorological stations in the Andes. The station Vallecitos (Mendoza province) at 32°59'14" S, 69°20'58"W, 2505 m, has been operation since November. Cristo Redentor (Mendoza province), 32°56'11"S, 69°23'35"W, 4125 m elevation, and Agua Negra (San Juan province), 30°20'36" S, 69°40'25"W, 4750 m elevation, will be set in the next months. The three stations are located in the Central Andes of Argentina. The High-elevation network of met stations, including a total of 15 stations across the Argentinean Andes (22-54°S), is supported by CONICET, the Argentinean Council for Science and Technology.

Challenges:

A. of human nature:

• Difficulty to convince scientists to share data.
• Difficulty to access data related to energy production.

B. regarding data sources:

• There are very few high elevation stations although most precipitation occurs in the mountains. Some local Argentinean water organizations have a few high elevation stations.

C. scientific challenges:

• Topographic effects on precipitation: Presumably most of the station data are from low and moderate elevations, so corrections are needed for the elevation dependence of precipitation. Without this step the water balance will not be acceptable in most cases. Several approaches are available to do this analysis. In the US the PRISM product is very useful for large scale studies, but this is not available globally.
• For some basins NASA ASTER DEM satellite data is available which can be used in topographic models.
• Topographic effects on temperature: are more easily to be included (linear variation). The Chilean Wheater Service provides records of the daily elevation of the 0°C on its web page.

Next steps:

• Expand the dataset.
• Alan Hamlet, ADD AFFILIATION, will support the effort with program code to produce gridded met data.

Please contact Ricardo Villalba or Alan Hamlet if you are interested in contributing data or modeling expertise.

Participants:

Dan Fagre
USGS/Glacier NP
USA
> Dan_fagre@usgs.gov

Melitta Fiebig-Wittmaak
Centre for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA), La Serena
Chile
> Melitta.fiebig@gmail.com

Remigio Galarraga
Escuela de Postgrado en Ingeniería y Ciencias
Ecuador
> remigala@server.epn.edu.ec

Hugo Granados
Departamento de Vulcanología Instituto de Geofísica
Mexico
> hugo@tonatiuh.igeofcu.unam.mx

Glen Jamieson
Mount Arrowsmith BR
Canada
> info@mountarrowsmithbiosphere.ca

Pablo Lagos
Instituto Geofisico, Lima
Peru
> plagos@geo.igp.gob.pec

Jennifer Lipton
University of Texas
USA
> jenlipton@mail.utexas.edu

Sonia Montecinos
Centre for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA), La Serena
Chile
> smontecinos@userena.cl

Luis Ortega
Conservation Int.
Colombia
> bambam_86@yahoo.com

Cecilia Roa
CIAT
Colombia
> m.roa@cgiar.org

Fernando Salazar
IDEAM Colombia
Colombia
> fsalazar@ideam.gov.co
> fersalazer@cable.net.co

Hans Schreier
University of British Colombia
Canada
> star@interchange.ubc.ca

Anton Seimon
Columbia University
USA
> seimon@iri.columbia.edu

Ricardo Villalba
IANIGLA
Argentina
> ricardo@lab.cricyt.edu.ar

José Villanueva
INIFAP
Mexico
>villanueva.jose@inifap.gob.mx