TITLE:
Correlations of Stream Flow and Climatic Variables for a Large Glacierized Himalayan Basin
AUTHORS:
Manohar Arora, Rakesh Kumar, Jatin Malhotra, Naresh Kumar
KEYWORDS:
Gangotri Glacier, Correlations, Hydro Meteorological Variables, Storage Characteristics, Discharge
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Water Resource and Protection,
Vol.6 No.14,
October
27,
2014
ABSTRACT: Streamflow
represents the integrated response of a watershed to climatic variables,
particularly precipitation and air temperature. In this study, relationships
between discharge and hydro meteorological parameters near the snout of
Gangotri Glacier were investigated. The auto correlations and multi day influence
of temperature and rainfall on discharge can provide valuable information about
the Glacier response which can be helpful for estimating discharge in data
scarce regions. The
data for eight continuous ablation seasons (2000-2007) were used investigating
correlations, lag cross correlations and multivariate regression analysis
between daily mean discharge, daily mean temperature and daily rainfall,
whereas last four years data (2008-2011) was used to simulate the daily
discharge from the established relations. Snowmelt discharge varies during the
rise in the annual temperature cycle in response to the combination of
temperature variation and the amount of water held in the evolving snowpack.
The discharge and temperature is highly auto correlated. It was
found that discharge of a particular day (Qi) is well represented by
the regression equation having Qi-1, Ti, and Ri.
Such developed regression equation can be used for computing discharge once its
input variables are available. The regression equation developed using the
eight year data i.e. Qi = 2.962 + 1.011Qi-1- 0.422Ti + 0.203Ri is used for forecasting of
discharge. For all the years discharge was computed with high accuracy (R2-0.93).