Central Asia Republics – River Forecasting System

Water resources supply in Central Asia is limited and often contentious, as five countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) must share the water from the two major rivers, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya. The effectiveness and efficiency of irrigation systems operations, and reservoir operations for power generation, depend on how well these countries can forecast stream flows in these international rivers.

The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) is working with USAID to provide assistance to the Central Asian   countries to improve water management in the Aral Sea basin. Riverside Technology, inc. (RTi) supported NWS by implementing the NWS River Forecast System in prototype river basins in the Central Asian countries to provide forecasts of snowmelt. These forecasts are critically important as the majority of the inflows to the Aral Sea are produced by snow melt during the spring.

RTi worked with the NWS and the Central Asian hydro-meteorology agencies to develop common data formats and select the prototype river basins. Those agencies provided historical precipitation, temperature, and streamflow data for the basins, and RTi performed data analysis, model calibration, and forecast system initialization. RTi delivered the forecast system and provided a two-week training session. As part of the training, current data were entered into the system to bring the states of the system up to date. Short-term and long-range river forecasts were successfully produced for spring 2002, and actively used by the hydro-meteorology agencies managing the water in the prototype river basins.

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