Operations
The operations that model the flow of water through the hydrologic cycle fall generally into categories of:
precipitation, including snow accumulation and melting
water flow on or below the upper soil surface
water movement from one location to another on a river
Operations form the scientific heart of the NWSRFS and therefore must be easily called on, utilized and organized.
Because of the modular nature of the functions which make up any operation, functions need to be shared among the programs which form the NWSRFS.
This allows new scientific techniques to be developed in the structure specified for an operation, and once tested to be immediately available for use in forecasting with the NWSRFS.
Hydrologic operations in NWSRFS are organized into an 'operations table' to specify the physics of water movement for any sub-basin.
The order in which operations are computed depends on the hydrometeorological conditions of the sub-basin modeled.
RFC forecasters can use their hydrologic expertise to determine the best sequence of scientific algorithms or operations to model each sub-basin.
In this way, NWSRFS provides a generalized river forecasting system which can be used to model basins in any hydroclimatic regime.
