Environmental Remote Sensing for Water Sustainability

Satellite-borne Precipitation Observations for Sustainable Infrastructure Design and Water Resources Management  

Ombadi et al. (2018), Developing Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Curves From Satellite-Based Precipitation: Methodology and Evaluation. Water Resources Research.

Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) curves are statistical relationships that provide probabilistic estimates of the intensity of extreme rainfall events for the purpose of infrastructure design. Due to the sparse density of in-situ rainfall observations in many parts of the world, IDF relationships are difficult to establish, especially in developing, low-income parts of the world. Here, we propose a methodology for the development of IDF from satellite-based precipitation and we assess the suitability of the method by comparing its results with IDFs established over the Contiguous United States.  

Ombadi et al. (2021), Retrospective Analysis and Bayesian Model Averaging of CMIP6 Precipitation in the Nile River Basin. Journal of Hydrometeorology.

The Nile River basin is shared between 11 countries, and its water supports life for a population of millions in riparian countries. A major question with significant socioeconomic and political implications is how will climate change impact water resources availability in the Nile River? We often resort to outputs of Global Climate Models (GCMs) to address this question, but different models show different results and trends. In this paper, a framework based on Bayesian Average Modeling is proposed to utilize historical satellite-based observations in constraining future projections of climate models.