Scheduled Downtime
On Tuesday 24 October 2023 @ 5pm MT the forums will be in read only mode in preparation for the downtime. On Wednesday 25 October 2023 @ 5am MT, this website will be down for maintenance and expected to return online later in the morning.
Normal Operations
The forums are back online with normal operations. If you notice any issues or errors related to the forums, please reach out to help@ucar.edu

River discharge from MOSART: over land vs. to ocean

L

luna_bloin

Luna Bloin-Wibe
New Member
Hi all,

I have been looking into getting streamflow values from MOSART, and was wondering as to the meaning of the variables at hand. From what I have read (partly on this forum), the variable I want would be RIVER_DISCHARGE_OVER_LAND_LIQ. However, I noticed that most grid cells along the coast are missing - to illustrate this, I show here a temporal mean of RIVER_DISCHARGE_OVER_LAND_LIQ for Europe:

Picture1.png
Additionally, I noticed that the variable RIVER_DISCHARGE_TO_OCEAN_LIQ seems to include only the grid cells along the coast (and over the ocean):
Picture2.png
Are these variables separated for a particular reason, and if not, can I simply add them up? The TO_OCEAN values are significantly smaller, but not negligible (if you sum them over time and space they are about an order of magnitude smaller), so it seems I can't just ignore these completely.

Would be grateful for any insights on this!
Best regards,
Luna Bloin-Wibe
 
O

oleson

Keith Oleson
CSEG and Liaisons
Staff member
RIVER_DISCHARGE_OVER_LAND_LIQ is river basin or channel flow. We use this to compute the amount of water in the rivers as part of a complete accounting of water mass on land.
And we use it to evaluate the river flow at individual discharge stations, e.g., to produce a plot like this:


I'm not aware of a RIVER_DISCHARGE_TO_OCEAN_LIQ variable. MOSART does have a TOTAL_DISCHARGE_TO_OCEAN_LIQ variable. We use this to compute the discharge of water into the oceans, e.g., to produce a plot like this:


and like this:

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top