STOCHASTIC HYDROMETEOROLOGY SESSION

The 2020 meeting has been canceled due to concerns for public health and safety in regards to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

We remain committed to sharing knowledge and ideas throughout our strong and vibrant scientific community. We will make arrangements for students or scientists who remain interested in presenting their research via web-conference.

Anyone interested in presenting online (via webinar) should contact the Hydrology Days Organizing Committee by March 26, 2020 – please include your presentation title (hydrologydays@engr.colostate.edu).

LOVELAND, CO – SEPTEMBER 14: A large section of Colorado U.S. 34, completely washed out from recent flooding of the Big Thompson River in the Big Thompson Canyon in Larimer County Colorado Saturday morning, September 14, 2013. (Photo By Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

Session Chair: Mahshid Ghanbari

Statistical analysis, probability theory, and stochastic processes have been applied since early last century to a wide range of hydrometeorological processes such as precipitation, evaporation, wind, temperature, and streamflow and to related problems in fields such as hydrology, hydraulics, water resources planning and management, agricultural engineering, environmental systems, and ecohydrology. For example, for evaluating and designing flood related hydraulic structures, flow records, instrumental and paleoflood data, are analyzed to determine flood values, the corresponding exceedance probabilities (or return periods), and associated reliability (or risk).

While these procedures may appear to be straightforward, uncertainties arise because of factors such as limited sample size, unknown probability distribution function of the flood data, effects of climate variability and change on the hydrologic cycle and on hydrological extreme events such as large/intense precipitation, major floods, sea level rise, and big storm surges, etc.

Similar concerns apply to all ranges of flow such as low flows, minimum flows, and accumulated flows, and likewise, to other processes such as precipitation, wind, temperature, humidity, evaporation, as well as to related processes including soil erosion, sediment transport, dam breaches, sea level rise and storm surges, transport of water contaminants, forest fires, drought intensity, and biomass dynamics. Even knowing the probability distribution of hydraulic head and velocity in porous media, rain drop size, aerosol mass and size distribution, and estimating species distribution and abundance in river networks are questions that can be approached by analyzing hydrometeorological and biological data using stochastic techniques.

The main objective of this session is, therefore, to present and discuss the newer innovating stochastic techniques that are being developed and applied to deal with the non-stationary and non-homogeneous conditions associated with the impacts of climate variability and change on eco-hydro-meteorological processes.

This event is organized by the One Water Solutions Institute at Colorado State University.  For questions or comments regarding Hydrology Days please contact: hydrologydays@engr.colostate.edu