Combining hydrological modeling and remote sensing for large scale water and energy balance studies

To address the objectives of large scale water and energy studies, such as GCIP and NASA's Earth Observing System IDS project on the Global Hydrological Cycle, requires a combination of water and energy balance modeling in conjunction with remote sensing. Remote sensing plays a critical role in providing the needed distributed data sets. A macroscale, process-based terrestrial water and energy balance model appropriate for large scale water and energy balance studies has been developed previously (by Wood and Lettenmaier). This model has been applied to the Red-Arkansas River basin in the southern Great Plains of the USA. Remote sensing methods for deriving required forcing inputs have been developed based on GOES and AVHRR satellite data and are the focus of this paper. The authors also present some preliminary simulations showing model performance.