A distributed stream temperature model using high resolution temperature observations

Abstract

Abstract. Distributed temperature data are used as input and as calibration data for an energy based temperature model of a first order stream in Luxembourg. A DTS (Distributed Temperature Sensing) system with a fiber optic cable of 1500 m was used to measure stream water temperature with 1 m resolution each 2 min. Four groundwater inflows were identified and quantified (both temperature and relative discharge). The temperature 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 is compared with the observed temperature at all points along the stream. Knowledge of the lateral inflow appears to be crucial to simulate the temperature distribution and conversely, that stream temperature can be used successfully to identify sources of lateral inflow. The DTS fiber optic is an excellent tool to provide this knowledge.

Stream temperature prediction in ungauged basins: review of recent approaches and description of a new physics-derived statistical model

“…Brown, 1969;Sinokrot and Stefan, 1993;Westhoff et al, 2007). However, it differs from these models in the sense that we seek a much simpler expression for stream temperature, expressed as a function of variables which are readily available at the regional scale.…”

“…This fostered the development of many stochastic and deterministic models (e.g. Mohseni et al, 1998;Segura et al, 2014;Chang and Psaris, 2013;DeWeber and Wagner, 2014;Meier et al, 2003;Westhoff et al, 2007). The former type relies on a statistical analysis to empirically relate stream temperature to climatic and physiographic variables, such as air temperature, discharge, altitude or channel width (see Benyahya et al, 2007, for a complete review of this subject).…”

“…(2) corresponds to friction, which is usually neglected in stream temperature models (e.g. Sinokrot and Stefan, 1993;Westhoff et al, 2007), but has been shown by Hannah et al (2004) and Leach and Moore (2014) to be an important term in the energy balance of small streams during winter.…”

“…Assuming a well-mixed water column and a negligible longitudinal heat dispersion, the mass and energy-balance equations along a stream reach read (adapted from Westhoff et al, 2007)…”

Fiber optic distributed temperature sensing for the determination of air temperature

“…Applications vary from temperature profiling of the subsurface: borehole observations (Freifeld et al, 2008), soils (Ciocca et al, 2012;Jansen et al, 2011;Sayde et al, 2010;Steele-Dunne et al, 2010); water: estuaries (Henderson et al, 2009), surface/groundwater (Lowry et al, 2007;Mamer and Lowry, 2013), solar ponds , streams (Selker et al, 2006;Vogt et al, 2010;Westhoff et al, 2007Westhoff et al, , 2011 and lakes (Vercauteren et al, 2011;van Emmerik et al, 2013); rocks (Read et al, 2013), ice caves (Curtis and Kyle, 2011), forests (Krause et al, 2013) and infrastructure: dam surveillance (Dornstadter, 1998), sewers , electric transmission cables (Yilmaz and Karlik, 2006) and gas pipelines (Tanimola and Hill, 2009).…”