Impacts of climate change on rainfall extremes and urban drainage systems: a review

Arnbjerg‐Nielsen, Karsten; Willems, Patrick; Olsson, Jonas; Beecham, Simon; Pathirana, Assela; Gregersen, Ida Bülow; Madsen, Henrik; Nguyen, Van Kien

doi:10.2166/wst.2013.251

Cited by 271 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…However, our investigation focused on rivers, not on the small-scale flooding caused by changes in intense local precipitation, which may have a greater impact in the future (e.g., in urban areas) (Arnbjerg-Nielsen et al, 2013;Olsson and Foster, 2014). We found a small, albeit not statistically significant, negative trend in river high flow, indicating a 0.4 % decrease in 10-year flood frequency each decade.…”

Section: Changes In High Flows In Swedenmentioning

confidence: 74%

Climate impact on floods: changes in high flows in Sweden in the past and the future (1911–2100)

Arheimer

Lindström

2015

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

134

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Abstract. There is an ongoing discussion whether floods occur more frequently today than in the past, and whether they will increase in number and magnitude in the future. To explore this issue in Sweden, we merged observed time series for the past century from 69 gauging sites throughout the country (450 000 km 2 ) with high-resolution dynamic model projections of the upcoming century. The results show that the changes in annual maximum daily flows in Sweden oscillate between dry and wet periods but exhibit no significant trend over the past 100 years. Temperature was found to be the strongest climate driver of changes in river high flows, which are related primarily to snowmelt in Sweden. Annual daily high flows may decrease by on average −1 % per decade in the future, mainly due to lower peaks from snowmelt in the spring (−2 % per decade) as a result of higher temperatures and a shorter snow season. In contrast, autumn flows may increase by +3 % per decade due to more intense rainfall. This indicates a shift in floodgenerating processes in the future, with greater influence of rain-fed floods. Changes in climate may have a more significant impact on some specific rivers than on the average for the whole country. Our results suggest that the temporal pattern in future daily high flow in some catchments will shift in time, with spring floods in the northern-central part of Sweden occurring about 1 month earlier than today. High flows in the southern part of the country may become more frequent. Moreover, the current boundary between snow-driven floods in northern-central Sweden and rain-driven floods in the south may move toward higher latitudes due to less snow accumulation in the south and at low altitudes. The findings also indicate a tendency in observations toward the modeled projections for timing of daily high flows over the last 25 years. Uncertainties related to both the observed data and the complex model chain of climate impact assessments in hydrology are discussed.

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Section: Changes In High Flows In Swedenmentioning

confidence: 74%

Climate impact on floods: changes in high flows in Sweden in the past and the future (1911–2100)

Arheimer

Lindström

2015

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

134

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“…Moreover, temporal scales relevant to flood risk vary enormously with area (Blöschl and Sivapalan, 1995;Westra et al, 2014): for catchments, hours to days are relevant (Mueller and Pfister, 2011), whereas urban drainage systems of ∼ 10 km (Arnbjerg-Nielsen et al, 2013) are impacted at timescales from minutes to hours (De Toffol et al, 2009), and soil erosion can occur at even smaller scales (Mueller and Pfister, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal and spatial scaling impacts on extreme precipitation

Eggert

Berg

Haerter³

et al. 2015

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. Convective and stratiform precipitation events have fundamentally different physical causes. Using a radar composite over Germany, this study separates these precipitation types and compares extremes at different spatial and temporal scales, ranging from 1 to 50 km and 5 min to 6 h, respectively. Four main objectives are addressed. First, we investigate extreme precipitation intensities for convective and stratiform precipitation events at different spatial and temporal resolutions to identify type-dependent space and time reduction factors and to analyze regional and seasonal differences over Germany. We find strong differences between the types, with up to 30 % higher reduction factors for convective compared to stratiform extremes, exceeding all other observed seasonal and regional differences within one type. Second, we investigate how the differences in reduction factors affect the contribution of each type to extreme events as a whole, again dependent on the scale and the threshold chosen. A clear shift occurs towards more convective extremes at higher resolution or higher percentiles. For horizontal resolutions of current climate model simulations, i.e., ∼ 10 km, the temporal resolution of the data as well as the chosen threshold have profound influence on which type of extreme will be statistically dominant. Third, we compare the ratio of area to duration reduction factor for convective and stratiform events and find that convective events have lower effective advection velocities than stratiform events and are therefore more strongly affected by spatial than by temporal aggregation. Finally, we discuss the entire precipitation distribution regarding data aggregation and identify matching pairs of temporal and spatial resolutions where similar distributions are observed. The information is useful for planning observational networks or storing model data at different temporal and spatial scales.

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“…A recent review by Willems et al (2012a, b) and Arnbjerg-Nielsen et al (2013) of the impacts of climate change on short-duration rainfall extremes and urban drainage showed that short-duration rainfall extremes were projected to increase by 10-60 % in 2100 relative to the baseline period ). An urban drainage system may damp or amplify changes in precipitation, depending on the system characteristics.…”

Section: Urban Catchmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projected Change—River Flow and Urban Drainage

Willems

Lloyd‐Hughes

2016

North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment

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Hydrological extremes, largely driven by precipitation, are projected to become more intense within the North Sea region. Quantifying future changes in hydrology is difficult, mainly due to the high uncertainties in future greenhouse gas emissions and climate model output. Nevertheless, models suggest that peak river flow in many rivers may be up to 30 % higher by 2100, and in some rivers even higher. The greatest increases are projected for the northern basins. Earlier spring floods are projected for snow-dominated catchments but this does not always cause an increase in peak flows; peak flows may decrease if higher spring temperatures lead to reduced snow storage. An increase in rain-fed flow in winter and autumn may change the seasonality of peak flows and floods. The proximity of a river basin to the ocean is also important; the closer the two the greater the potential damping of any climate change effect. In urban catchments, the specific characteristics of the drainage system will dictate whether the net result of the climate change effect, for example the projected increase in short-duration rainfall extremes, is to damp or amplify the impact of this change in precipitation. The response in terms of sewer flood and overflow frequencies and volumes is highly non-linear. The combined impact of climate change and increased urbanisation in some parts of the North Sea region could result in as much as a four-fold increase in sewer overflow volumes.

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Impacts of climate change on rainfall extremes and urban drainage systems: a review

Cited by 271 publications

References 83 publications

Climate impact on floods: changes in high flows in Sweden in the past and the future (1911–2100)

Climate impact on floods: changes in high flows in Sweden in the past and the future (1911–2100)

Temporal and spatial scaling impacts on extreme precipitation

Projected Change—River Flow and Urban Drainage

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