ExtendinG SUb-DAily River Discharge data over INdia (GUARDIAN).

Area of Science:

• Hydrology
• Water Resource Management
• Remote Sensing

Background:

• Accurate river discharge data is vital for India but often delayed.
• Near real-time (NRT) data availability is hindered by measurement challenges.
• Telemetry-based water surface elevation (WSE) offers a viable alternative for discharge estimation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a method for converting NRT WSE data into river discharge across India.
• To generate extensive, sub-daily and hourly discharge datasets for Indian rivers.
• To provide accessible NRT discharge data and rating curves for research and management.

Main Methods:

• Web-scraping NRT WSE data from the Central Water Commission (CWC) flood portal.
• Utilizing historically derived rating curves (RCs) to convert WSE to discharge.
• Applying RCs across 210 gauging stations for continuous discharge data generation.

Main Results:

• Generated over 800,000 annual discharge data points for Indian rivers.
• Provided sub-daily discharge during non-monsoon and hourly during monsoon (June-September).
• Established NRT access to WSE, discharge, and local RCs for 210 stations.

Conclusions:

• The study successfully extended river discharge data using NRT WSE and RCs.
• The generated datasets significantly enhance water resource and flood management capabilities in India.
• This approach offers a scalable solution for NRT hydrological monitoring across the country.