Spaceborne River Discharge From a Nonparametric Stochastic Quantile Mapping Function

The number of active gauges with open-data policy for discharge monitoring along rivers has decreased over the last decades. Therefore, spaceborne measurements are investigated as alternatives. Among different techniques for estimating river discharge from space, developing a rating curve between the ground-based discharge and spaceborne river water level or width is the most straightforward one. However, this does not always lead to successful results, since the river section morphology often cannot simply be modeled by a limited number of parameters. Moreover, such methods do not deliver a proper estimation of the discharge's uncertainty as a result of the mismodeling and also the coarse assumptions made for the uncertainty of inputs. Here, we propose a nonparametric model for estimating river discharge and its uncertainty from spaceborne river width measurements. The model employs a stochastic quantile mapping scheme by, iteratively: (a) generating realizations of river discharge and width time series using Monte Carlo simulation, (b) obtaining a collection of quantile mapping functions by matching all possible permutations of simulated river discharge and width quantile functions, and (c) adjusting the measurement uncertainties according to the point cloud scatter. We validate our method over 14 different river reaches along the Niger, Congo, Po Rivers, and several river reaches in the Mississippi river basin. Our results show that the proposed algorithm can mitigate the effect of measurement noise and also possible mismodeling. Moreover, the proposed algorithm delivers a meaningful uncertainty for the estimated discharge and allows us to calibrate the error bars of in situ discharge measurements.

Automated summary

The number of active gauges for discharge monitoring along rivers has decreased, leading to an investigation of spaceborne measurements as alternatives. A nonparametric model is proposed for estimating river discharge and its uncertainty from spaceborne river width measurements, providing meaningful uncertainty and allowing for the calibration of error bars in situ discharge measurements.