Continental and global scale flood forecasting systems

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, February 2016, doi:10.1002/wat2.1137:

This article outlines the developments that have led to forecasting floods on the global scale, the current state-of-the-art technology in operational large-scale flood forecasting, and future developments in global-scale flood forecasting and early warning. It reviews six large-scale flood forecasting systems, describing similarities and differences in their approaches to forecasting floods at the global and continental scale.

According to this paper, operational systems currently have the capability to produce coarse-scale discharge forecasts in the medium-range and disseminate forecasts and, in some cases, early warning products in real time across the globe, in support of national forecasting capabilities. With improvements in seasonal weather forecasting, future advances may include more seamless hydrological forecasting at the global scale alongside a move towards multi-model forecasts and grand ensemble techniques, responding to the requirement of developing multi-hazard early warning systems for disaster risk reduction.