John Pomeroy , Director of the Centre for Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan presents his findings on the Cold Regions Hydrological Modelling platform (CRHM). It is an object-oriented, modular and flexible platform for assembling hydrological models, based on over fifty years of hydrology research at the University of Saskatchewan, and Environment Canada.
Components include a full suite of snow and frozen ground processes, and in the mountains it can be altered to deal with extreme topography.
It was largely developed for mountain applications from field experiments at Marmot Creek Research Basin, Kananaskis. The modelling of the rain and snow includes: calculations of radiation, blowing snow around and melting it, infiltrating water into frozen and unfrozen soils, and running water down hill slopes. It includes an uncalibrated streamflow test, and measured rainfall rates at Marmot Creek. During the flood in Alberta in 2013, rainfall was measured and peak rainfall was determined to have occurred June 20th, with a peak rainfall rate of 13 mm per hour.
It was concluded that the flood of June 2013 in the Canadian Rockies was primarily achieved from 250 mm of rainfall in the Front Ranges. Rain on snow melt added contributions of 100 mm. Additional modelling was done to determine how the rainfall amount would have changed if it had occurred at different parts of the summer in 2013, and at different years.
This presentation was a part of the CWRA Alberta Branch Annual Conference, March 2014.
