WMO-HydroSOS meeting held in Nanjing, China

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From 10 to 15 November, Claudia Ruz Vargas attended the WMO 1st Technical Workshop and 3rd Task Team Meeting of HydroSOS at the Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute (NHRI) in Nanjing, China.

Discussion areas 1st technical workshop

  1. How to finalise the initial HydroSOS technical protocols for status assessment, outlook methods and service delivery;
  2. Further evolution of the HydroSOS demonstrator, including priority data streams and features; and
  3. Development of project plans for pilot operational HydroSOS capabilities in the Lake Victoria and Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basins. 

The 3rd task meeting included discussions about the future timeline for HydroSOS development (including key milestones and deliverables), programme structure and partners, funding, project internal and external communications, and stakeholder engagement.

About HydroSOS

The WMO Global Hydrological Status and Outlook System, HydroSOS, will be an operational system that will regularly report: 

  • The current global hydrological status, including groundwater, river flow and soil moisture;
  • An assessment of where the current status is different from normal, identifying trends and indicating potential drought and flood situations; and 
  • A forecast, to find out if the situation is likely to get better or worse over coming weeks and months, depending on the variable.

The role of IGRAC

Since April 2019, IGRAC has been actively contributing to Work Package (WP) 2b on Current Status Assessment and Modelling methods, by collecting methodologies used currently by countries to assess the status of their groundwater resources, based on groundwater level data collected through their national groundwater monitoring networks.

In Nanjing, it was decided that IGRAC will also contribute to WP 2a on Data Sources and Exchange Methods. IGRAC’s contribution will include to identify groundwater data gaps, find groundwater data holders per country and methods on how data is/could be shared, identify other data holders (scientific data), and to establish a methodology for data exchange between WPs, among others.