Satellites as the Panacea to Transboundary Limitations for Longer Term Flood Forecasting?

This article presents a brief overview of the challenges associated with long-term flood forecasting, as experienced by many flood-prone developing nations, due to transboundary limitations. The potential of satellite rainfall data to overcome such limitations is highlighted. The article also discusses the limitations of rainfall estimates from space-borne platforms due to their high degree of uncertainty in measurement. This is contrasted by the vantage of space that makes them immune to transboundary limitations of real-time sharing of rainfall data across boundaries. Since the availability of satellite rainfall is expected to magnify with the proposed Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission in 2013, it is important for flood forecasting agencies in developing countries to initiate a range of error propagation studies in order to assess the true worth of globally available satellite rainfall data.