The precision of Lake Champlain’s water level estimation is a key component in the flood forecasting process for the Richelieu River. Hydrological models do not typically take in consideration the effects of the wind on the water level (also known as wind set-up). The objective of this study is to create an empirical wind set-up forecast model for Lake Champlain to ultimately improve flood forecasting during high-wind events. The proposed model uses wind speed and direction across the Lake, as well as wind gusts and atmospheric pressure difference between both ends of the Lake as inputs. The model is calibrated to a subset of the observations and evaluated on an independent sample. The model is tested and compared to a variant of the Zuider Zee equation on twenty wind set-up events that have occurred between 2017 and 2019 using hindcast data from five different numerical weather prediction systems (GDPS, RDPS, HRDPS, NOAA and ECMWF). A quantile mapping-based forecast calibration scheme is implemented for each of the forecast products to correct biases in the forecast products. The results show that events are successfully predicted by the proposed model at least 72 hours in advance. These results are better than the other comparative models found in the literature and tested herein. Overall, significant improvements are obtained by including wind speed and wind gusts from different weather stations.
Loiselle, G. (Author),
Arsenault (Supervisor),
Poulin (Co-supervisor) &
Martel (Co-supervisor),
16 Jul 2021Student thesis: Master's thesis › Master in Engineering: Construction Engineering