Fully Integrated Atmospheric, Surface, and Subsurface Model of the California Basin
Abstract
The recent drought in the Western United States has crippled agriculture in California's Central Valley. Farmers, facing reduced surface water flow, have turned to groundwater as their primary solution to the water crisis. However, the unsustainable pumping rates seen throughout California have drastically decreased the surface and subsurface water levels. For this reason, we developed a coupled subsurface, surface, and atmospheric model for the entire California Basin that captures the feedbacks between the three domains at an extremely high spatial and temporal resolution. Our coupled model framework integrates HydroGeoSphere (HGS), a fully implicit three-dimensional control-volume finite element surface and variably saturated subsurface model with evapotranspiration process, to Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF), a three-dimensional mesoscale nonhydrostatic atmospheric model. HGS replaces the land surface component within WRF, and provides WRF with the actual evapotranspiration (AET) and soil saturation. In return, WRF provides HGS with the potential evapotranspiration (PET) and precipitation fluxes. The flexible coupling technique allows HGS and WRF to have unique meshing and projection characteristics and links the domains based on their geographic coordinates (i.e., latitude and longitude). The California Basin model successfully simulated similar drawdown rates to the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and replicated the Klamath and Sacramento River hydrographs. Furthermore, our simulation results reproduced field measured precipitation and evapotranspiration. Currently, our coupled California Basin model is the most complete water resource simulator because we combine the surface, subsurface, and atmosphere into a single domain.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFM.H52B..02D
- Keywords:
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- 1829 Groundwater hydrology;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1830 Groundwater/surface water interaction;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1831 Groundwater quality;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY