A five-day workshop on ‘Application of Satellite Rainfall Estimation in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region’ concluded recently in Kathmandu, Nepal. The event was organised by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). Technical experts from national hydrological and meteorological services and academic institutions in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan were joined by experts from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Japan, to develop the application of satellite rainfall estimation methods in the countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region. The workshop is seen as an important step towards improved forecasting of floods and monitoring of droughts by improving estimation of rainfall using advanced remote sensing tools.
At present, rainfall measurements in the mountain regions of the extended Himalayan change are very limited as large parts of the region are poorly accessible and have limited infrastructure, and there are very few ground-based monitoring stations. But it is this rainfall that is mainly responsible for the downstream floods in South Asia.
Sponsored by the US Agency for International Development’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) through a Subaward with the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the workshop was a part of the second phase of a project on Application of Satellite Rainfall Estimation (SRE) in the HKH region which will run from December 2008 to June 2010. The Phase 2 project builds upon the outcomes of, and seeks to address the gaps identified in the first phase. The aim is to conduct rigorous validation of the satellite rainfall estimates developed by the NOAA Climate Prediction Centre for various rainfall regimes, and to improve the satellite-based rainfall estimates and apply them to the stream-flow model developed by USGS to simulate the flooding in the greater Himalayan region.
