Building a flood climatology and rethinking flood risk at continental scales

Jeffrey Neal; Konstantinos M. Andreadis; Guy Schumann; Dimitrios Stampoulis; Andrew Smith; Paul Bates; Chris Sampson; Robert Brackenridge; Albert Kettner

Abstract

Floods are one of the costliest natural disasters and the ability to understand their characteristics and their interactions with population, land cover and climate changes is of paramount importance. In order to accurately reproduce flood characteristics such as water inundation and heights both in the river channels and floodplains, hydrodynamic models are required. Most of these models operate at very high resolutions and are computationally very expensive, making their application over large areas very difficult. However, a need exists for such models to be applied at regional to global scales so that the effects of climate change with regards to flood risk can be examined. We use the a modeling framework that includes the VIC hydrologic and the LISFLOOD-FP hydrodynamic model to simulate a 40-year history of flood characteristics at the continental scale, particularly Australia. In order to extend the simulated flood climatology to 50-100 years in a consistent manner, reanalysis datasets have to be used as meteorological forcings to the models. The objective of this study is the evaluation of multiple
atmospheric reanalysis datasets (ERA, NCEP, MERRA, JRA) as inputs to the VIC/LISFLOOD-FP model. Comparisons of the simulated flood characteristics are made with both satellite observations of inundation and a benchmark simulation of LISFLOOD-FP being forced by observed flows. The implications of having a climatology of flood characteristics are discussed, and in particularWe found the magnitude and timing of floodplain water storage to significantly differ from streamflow in terms of their distribution. Furthermore, floodplain volume gave
a much sharper discrimination of high hazard and low hazard periods than discharge, and using the latter can lead to significant overestimation. These results demonstrate that global streamflow statistics or precipitation should not
be used to infer flood hazard and risk, but instead a flood inundation climatology is necessary.

Original language	English
Publication status	Published - 2016
Event	European Geosciences Union General Assebley - Vienna, Austria Duration: 17 Apr 2016 → 22 Apr 2016

Conference

Conference	European Geosciences Union General Assebley
Country/Territory	Austria
City	Vienna
Period	17/04/16 → 22/04/16

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2016/EGU2016-11279.pdfLicence: Unspecified

Handle.net

Persistent link

Cite this

@conference{e9d7325d513e4ffbb0bc7f08dc82cb3d,

title = "Building a flood climatology and rethinking flood risk at continental scales",

abstract = "Floods are one of the costliest natural disasters and the ability to understand their characteristics and their interactions with population, land cover and climate changes is of paramount importance. In order to accurately reproduce flood characteristics such as water inundation and heights both in the river channels and floodplains, hydrodynamic models are required. Most of these models operate at very high resolutions and are computationally very expensive, making their application over large areas very difficult. However, a need exists for such models to be applied at regional to global scales so that the effects of climate change with regards to flood risk can be examined. We use the a modeling framework that includes the VIC hydrologic and the LISFLOOD-FP hydrodynamic model to simulate a 40-year history of flood characteristics at the continental scale, particularly Australia. In order to extend the simulated flood climatology to 50-100 years in a consistent manner, reanalysis datasets have to be used as meteorological forcings to the models. The objective of this study is the evaluation of multipleatmospheric reanalysis datasets (ERA, NCEP, MERRA, JRA) as inputs to the VIC/LISFLOOD-FP model. Comparisons of the simulated flood characteristics are made with both satellite observations of inundation and a benchmark simulation of LISFLOOD-FP being forced by observed flows. The implications of having a climatology of flood characteristics are discussed, and in particularWe found the magnitude and timing of floodplain water storage to significantly differ from streamflow in terms of their distribution. Furthermore, floodplain volume gavea much sharper discrimination of high hazard and low hazard periods than discharge, and using the latter can lead to significant overestimation. These results demonstrate that global streamflow statistics or precipitation should notbe used to infer flood hazard and risk, but instead a flood inundation climatology is necessary.",

author = "Jeffrey Neal and Andreadis, {Konstantinos M.} and Guy Schumann and Dimitrios Stampoulis and Andrew Smith and Paul Bates and Chris Sampson and Robert Brackenridge and Albert Kettner",

year = "2016",

language = "English",

note = "European Geosciences Union General Assebley ; Conference date: 17-04-2016 Through 22-04-2016",

}

TY - CONF

T1 - Building a flood climatology and rethinking flood risk at continental scales

AU - Neal, Jeffrey

AU - Andreadis, Konstantinos M.

AU - Schumann, Guy

AU - Stampoulis, Dimitrios

AU - Smith, Andrew

AU - Bates, Paul

AU - Sampson, Chris

AU - Brackenridge, Robert

AU - Kettner, Albert

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - Floods are one of the costliest natural disasters and the ability to understand their characteristics and their interactions with population, land cover and climate changes is of paramount importance. In order to accurately reproduce flood characteristics such as water inundation and heights both in the river channels and floodplains, hydrodynamic models are required. Most of these models operate at very high resolutions and are computationally very expensive, making their application over large areas very difficult. However, a need exists for such models to be applied at regional to global scales so that the effects of climate change with regards to flood risk can be examined. We use the a modeling framework that includes the VIC hydrologic and the LISFLOOD-FP hydrodynamic model to simulate a 40-year history of flood characteristics at the continental scale, particularly Australia. In order to extend the simulated flood climatology to 50-100 years in a consistent manner, reanalysis datasets have to be used as meteorological forcings to the models. The objective of this study is the evaluation of multipleatmospheric reanalysis datasets (ERA, NCEP, MERRA, JRA) as inputs to the VIC/LISFLOOD-FP model. Comparisons of the simulated flood characteristics are made with both satellite observations of inundation and a benchmark simulation of LISFLOOD-FP being forced by observed flows. The implications of having a climatology of flood characteristics are discussed, and in particularWe found the magnitude and timing of floodplain water storage to significantly differ from streamflow in terms of their distribution. Furthermore, floodplain volume gavea much sharper discrimination of high hazard and low hazard periods than discharge, and using the latter can lead to significant overestimation. These results demonstrate that global streamflow statistics or precipitation should notbe used to infer flood hazard and risk, but instead a flood inundation climatology is necessary.

AB - Floods are one of the costliest natural disasters and the ability to understand their characteristics and their interactions with population, land cover and climate changes is of paramount importance. In order to accurately reproduce flood characteristics such as water inundation and heights both in the river channels and floodplains, hydrodynamic models are required. Most of these models operate at very high resolutions and are computationally very expensive, making their application over large areas very difficult. However, a need exists for such models to be applied at regional to global scales so that the effects of climate change with regards to flood risk can be examined. We use the a modeling framework that includes the VIC hydrologic and the LISFLOOD-FP hydrodynamic model to simulate a 40-year history of flood characteristics at the continental scale, particularly Australia. In order to extend the simulated flood climatology to 50-100 years in a consistent manner, reanalysis datasets have to be used as meteorological forcings to the models. The objective of this study is the evaluation of multipleatmospheric reanalysis datasets (ERA, NCEP, MERRA, JRA) as inputs to the VIC/LISFLOOD-FP model. Comparisons of the simulated flood characteristics are made with both satellite observations of inundation and a benchmark simulation of LISFLOOD-FP being forced by observed flows. The implications of having a climatology of flood characteristics are discussed, and in particularWe found the magnitude and timing of floodplain water storage to significantly differ from streamflow in terms of their distribution. Furthermore, floodplain volume gavea much sharper discrimination of high hazard and low hazard periods than discharge, and using the latter can lead to significant overestimation. These results demonstrate that global streamflow statistics or precipitation should notbe used to infer flood hazard and risk, but instead a flood inundation climatology is necessary.

M3 - Conference Abstract

T2 - European Geosciences Union General Assebley

Y2 - 17 April 2016 through 22 April 2016

ER -