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Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., 4, 125-149, 2007
www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net/4/125/2007/
doi:10.5194/hessd-4-125-2007
© Author(s) 2007. This work is licensed
under a Creative Commons License.


A distributed stream temperature model using high resolution temperature observations

M. C. Westhoff1, H. H. G. Savenije1, W. M. J . Luxemburg1, G. S. Stelling2, N. C. van de Giesen1, J. S. Selker3, L. Pfister4, and S. Uhlenbrook5
1Water Resources Section, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
2Fluid Mechanics Section, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5048, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands
3Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering, Oregon State University,116 Gilmore Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
4Department Environment and Agro-biotechnologies, Centre de Recherche Public – Gabriel Lippmann, 41, rue du Brill, 4422 Belvaux, Luxembourg
5Department of Water Engineering, UNESCO-IHE, Westvest 7, 2611 AX Delft, The Netherlands

Abstract. Highly distributed temperature data are used as input and as calibration data for a temperature model of a first order stream in Luxembourg. A DTS (Distributed Temperature Sensing) fiber optic cable with a length of 1500 m is used to measure stream water temperature with a spatial resolution of 0.5 m and a temporal resolution of 2 min. With the observations four groundwater inflows are found and quantified (both temperature and relative discharge). They are used as input for the distributed temperature model presented here. The model calculates the total energy balance including solar radiation (with shading effects), longwave radiation, latent heat, sensible heat and river bed conduction. The simulated temperature along the whole stream is compared with the measured temperature at all points along the stream. It shows that proper knowledge of the lateral inflow is crucial to simulate the temperature distribution along the stream, and, the other way around stream temperature can be used successfully to identify runoff components. The DTS fiber optic is an excellent tool to provide this knowledge.

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Citation: Westhoff, M. C., Savenije, H. H. G., Luxemburg, W. M. J ., Stelling, G. S., van de Giesen, N. C., Selker, J. S., Pfister, L., and Uhlenbrook, S.: A distributed stream temperature model using high resolution temperature observations, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., 4, 125-149, doi:10.5194/hessd-4-125-2007, 2007.   Bibtex   EndNote   Reference Manager    XML