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Forecasting of pre-monsoon flash flood events in the northeastern Bangladesh using coupled hydrometeorological NWP modelling system

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Abstract

The northeastern depressed region of Bangladesh is highly susceptible to recurrent flash flooding due to excessive rainfall over these areas and in the upstream hilly regions. Two such severe pre-monsoon flash flood events occurred in 2016 and 2017. This research attempts to forecast both flash flood events using a coupled atmospheric-hydrological numerical weather prediction (NWP) model, namely the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model. The ARW (Advanced Research WRF) model is able to predict the rainfall over these areas with a lead time of 91 h. However, the discharge and water level are overestimated by the WRF-Hydro model. The model predicts a flash flood with a lag of approximately 12 h with respect to the highest amount of rainfall. The overall performances of the models were satisfactory. The two parameters, rainfall and subsequent discharge, which are required for delineation of lag time, were almost precisely simulated. Simulated values also had fewer errors, justified by the root mean squared error (RMSE) and mean absolute error values. The Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency criterion scores for model-derived discharge were close to 1.0, and the RMSE-observation standard deviation ratio scores were less than 0.5. This finding proves that the NWP models could be considered for forecasting flash flood events over selected areas of Bangladesh.

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Fig. 1

Source: SRTM Data; available at https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov.usa)

Fig. 2

taken from https://gadm.org/download_country_v3.html; the experimental domain has been drawn with WRF-Hydro GIS pre-processing toolkit (downloaded from https://ral.ucar.edu/projects/wrf_hydro/pre-processing-tools)

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Data availability

FNL Data were downloaded from https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds083.2/; GPM Data were downloaded from https://gpm.nasa.gov/data/directory; Rainfall Data, Discharge Data and Water Level Data were purchased from Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB); Rainfall Data were also collected from Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD). Apart from that—the datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes for WRF-ARW model are available at http://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/download/wrf-regist_or_download.php; and codes for WRF-Hydro model are available at https://ral.ucar.edu/projects/wrf_hydro/model-code.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh; through National Science and Technology Fellowship for FY 2018-2019. The authors are indebted to The World Bank for creating opportunities and bearing all expenses to perform internship at the Department of Atmospheric Science, School Earth Sciences, Central University of Rajasthan, India. The authors are grateful to Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) and Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) for providing all the necessary data and information. The authors appreciate the continuous help and assistance provided by Ms. Molly McAllister and Mr. Kevin Sampson (Research Applications Laboratory, Hydrometeorological Applications Program, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) as well as Mr. Riley Conroy (Software Engineer, National Center for Atmospheric Research) in conducting this research.

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Correspondence to S. K. Panda.

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Responsible Editor: J.-F. Miao.

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Shuvo, S.D., Rashid, T., Panda, S.K. et al. Forecasting of pre-monsoon flash flood events in the northeastern Bangladesh using coupled hydrometeorological NWP modelling system. Meteorol Atmos Phys 133, 1603–1625 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-021-00831-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-021-00831-z

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