Black Sea and Middle East Flash Flood Guidance System (BSME-FFG) Implementation

Turkey has diversified topographical and climatological conditions that high mountains run parallel to the coasts along the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea; East Anatolian a mountainous region with average height of 2500 meters; on the Aegean Sea coast, mountain ranges are perpendicular to the sea with very deep vales; and central Anatolia is a high plateau with average height of 1000 meter. Climatological conditions changes from one region to another very rapidly producing micro climate regions. Therefore, annual and seasonal precipitation pattern changes from one region to another very rapidly such annual precipitation amounts for Black Sea Region, Mediterranean Region, Eastern Anatolian Region and Aegean Sea regions are of 830 mm, 770 mm, 400 mm and 660 mm respectively. Moreover, Rize province in the Easter Black Sea Region receives annual precipitation over 2000 mm and In the Eastern Anatolian Region, dominant precipitation type is snow with two meters average height while dominant precipitation type is rainfall. During the transition seasons, precipitation mainly occurs due to convective activities and orographic lifting. Due to its topography and climate, flash floods occur very often in Turkey. Statistics collected by various state organizations depict that average human losses are of approximately twenty while economic losses are of millions of USD. Moreover, river floorings take place occasionally due to heavy rainfall and snow melt particularly in the Eastern Anatolian Region. Even though flooding is one of the most important natural disaster after earthquake, there are not any operational flood forecasting and warning systems to issue and kind of warnings and watches. As a part of Global Flash Flood Guidance System under the coordination of World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and financed by OFDA/USAID, Black Sea and Middle East Flash Flood Guidance System (BSME-FFG) was initiated in 2010. For the project Turkey is a regional center and Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bulgaria, Armenia and Syria are participating countries. The Project is being implemented by Hydrologic Research Center (HRC) and at the moment beta version is operational and Turkish Meteorological Service is using model outputs to issue warnings. Even though RADAR precipitation data have not ingested into the model, Turkish Meteorological Service is very satisfied with the model outputs because has captured a number of flash flood events. TMS believe that with the ingestion of weather RADAR data FFG model products will be improved. In addition to, standard FFG products, HRC has implemented snow water equivalent (SWE) and melt products because Turkey and regional countries had severe winter last season such that snow accumulation has reached approximately three meters in some city centers in the Eastern Anatolian Region.