Global Changes in 20‐Year, 50‐Year, and 100‐Year River Floods

Slater, Louise; Villarini, Gabriele; Archfield, Stacey A.; Faulkner, Duncan; Lamb, Robert A.; Khouakhi, Abdou; Yin, Jiabo

doi:10.1029/2020gl091824

Cited by 87 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…According to more than 1,200 gauges from North America and Europe, however, changes in the occurrence of 100-year floods were dominated by climate variability, not long-term trends 59 . A global analysis using time series of at least 70 years found mainly decreasing trends for the 100-year flood in arid regions (236 gauges, median trend: −26.4%) and temperate regions (401 gauges, median trend: −16.5%) for the period 1970 to the present day 149 . Cold regions showed mixed results (610 gauges, median trend: −0.4%) and tropical regions showed mostly upward trends (27 gauges, median trend: 35.3%).…”

Section: Observed Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causes, impacts and patterns of disastrous river floods

Merz

Blöschl

Vorogushyn

et al. 2021

Nat Rev Earth Environ

327

137

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River floods caused about 7 million fatalities in the twentieth century 1 , and their direct global average annual loss (AAL) is estimated at US$ 104 billion (2015Exposure to floods is expected to grow by a factor of three by 2050 owing to increases in population and economic assets in flood-prone areas 3 . Depending on the socio-economic scenario, human losses from flooding are projected to rise by 70-83% and direct flood damage by 160-240% relative to 1976-2005, with a temperature increase of 1.5 °C (ref. 4 ). Understanding river flooding and its associated impacts are critical to effective risk reduction.River floods occur when a river overtops its banks and inundates adjacent areas. The expected impact floods have on society and the environment, often termed flood risk, results from the superposition of three components and the associated processes, which tend to be interlinked [5][6][7] , including over large distances 8 . These components are: hazards -the processes leading to high river flood levels; exposure -the elements at risk, such as population or infrastructure; and vulnerabilitythe susceptibility of the elements at risk when they are affected by a flood 2 . These components are, in turn, the compound effects of multiple processes (fig. 1).

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Section: Observed Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causes, impacts and patterns of disastrous river floods

Merz

Blöschl

Vorogushyn

et al. 2021

Nat Rev Earth Environ

327

137

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Last, this study extracted extreme streamflow events from historical observation, we did not investigate flood events of specific return periods directly, e.g., 20-year, 50-year or 100-year flood (Slater et al 2021, Swain et al 2020. For flood events of return periods are not very extreme, they may be within the range of historical observation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contrasting scaling relationships of extreme precipitation and streamflow to temperature across the United States

Shen

Chui

2021

Environ. Res. Commun.

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Recent studies have reached inconsistent conclusions from scaling analysis about whether flood or extreme precipitation is more sensitive to warming climate. To explain the reasons behind the inconsistency, here we first used scaling analysis to illustrate how extreme daily precipitation and streamflow scale with daily air temperature across the Continental United States (CONUS). We found both similar and opposite scaling in extreme precipitation and streamflow. It indicates based on scaling analysis, the sensitivity of extreme streamflow to warming climate can be either similar, higher or lower to that of extreme precipitation. We further explored why there are contrasting scaling relationships in the CONUS. Generally, the similar scaling was found in regions where the timing of extreme precipitation and streamflow is correspondent, as well as with similar temporal evolution in extreme event timing and magnitude, e.g., the west coast and southern plains, implying extreme precipitation is the dominant driver of local floods. However, for regions with dissimilar scaling in extreme precipitation and streamflow (e.g., Rocky Mountains, southern plains), the characteristics of extreme streamflow show large difference to those of extreme precipitation, and the temporal evolution of extreme streamflow timing and magnitude are more correlated with factors/processes such as soil moisture and snowmelt. This study reflects that the contrasting scaling relationships of extreme precipitation and streamflow are oriented from the local hydro-climatological specifics. Using scaling analysis to compare the sensitivity of extreme precipitation and streamflow to warming climate is not suitable. Instead, we should focus more on local flood generating mechanisms or flood drivers when investigating floods in the changing climate.

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“…Hodgkins et al, 2019;Slater and Villarini, 2017a). In practice, alternative thresholds may be equally valid, such as the number of days when water levels exceed official flood thresholds (Slater and Villarini, 2016). However, set-ting a lower threshold means that events are less likely to be independent and/or of practical significance.…”

Section: Frequencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonstationary weather and water extremes: a review of methods for their detection, attribution, and management

Slater

Anderson

Buechel

et al. 2021

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

Self Cite

154

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Abstract. Hydroclimatic extremes such as intense rainfall, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wind or storms have devastating effects each year. One of the key challenges for society is understanding how these extremes are evolving and likely to unfold beyond their historical distributions under the influence of multiple drivers such as changes in climate, land cover, and other human factors. Methods for analysing hydroclimatic extremes have advanced considerably in recent decades. Here we provide a review of the drivers, metrics, and methods for the detection, attribution, management, and projection of nonstationary hydroclimatic extremes. We discuss issues and uncertainty associated with these approaches (e.g. arising from insufficient record length, spurious nonstationarities, or incomplete representation of nonstationary sources in modelling frameworks), examine empirical and simulation-based frameworks for analysis of nonstationary extremes, and identify gaps for future research.

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Global Changes in 20‐Year, 50‐Year, and 100‐Year River Floods

Cited by 87 publications

References 56 publications

Causes, impacts and patterns of disastrous river floods

Causes, impacts and patterns of disastrous river floods

Contrasting scaling relationships of extreme precipitation and streamflow to temperature across the United States

Nonstationary weather and water extremes: a review of methods for their detection, attribution, and management

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