Rethinking flood hazard at the global scale

Flooding is governed by the amount and timing of water spilling out of channels and moving across adjacent land, often with little warning. At global scales, flood hazard is typically inferred from streamflow, precipitation or from satellite images, yielding a largely incomplete picture. Thus, at pr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical research letters 2016-10, Vol.43 (19), p.10,249-10,256
Main Authors: Schumann, Guy J.‐P., Stampoulis, Dimitrios, Smith, Andrew M., Sampson, Christopher C., Andreadis, Konstantinos M., Neal, Jeffrey C., Bates, Paul D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Balances (scales)
Computer simulation
continental scale
Discharge
event simulations
flood hazard
Flood hazards
Flood insurance
Flood predictions
flood risk
Flooding
Floodplains
Floods
Freshwater
Hazards
Hydrodynamics
Inundation
Mathematical models
Precipitation
remote sensing
Satellite imagery
Satellites
Simulation
Storage
Stream discharge
Stream flow
Water depth
Water runoff
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Flooding is governed by the amount and timing of water spilling out of channels and moving across adjacent land, often with little warning. At global scales, flood hazard is typically inferred from streamflow, precipitation or from satellite images, yielding a largely incomplete picture. Thus, at present, the floodplain inundation variables, which define hazard, cannot be accurately predicted nor can they be measured at large scales. Here we present, for the first time, a complete continuous long‐term simulation of floodplain water depths at continental scale. Simulations of floodplain inundation were performed with a hydrodynamic model based on gauged streamflow for the Australian continent from 1973 to 2012. We found the magnitude and timing of floodplain storage to differ significantly from streamflow in terms of their distribution. Furthermore, floodplain volume gave a much sharper discrimination of high hazard and low hazard periods than discharge. These discrepancies have implications for characterizing flood hazard at the global scale from precipitation and streamflow records alone, suggesting that simulations and observations of inundation are also needed. Key Points First continental‐wide long‐term event‐continuous 2‐D flood inundation computations At‐a‐station discharge records do not directly translate to flood hazard There is a need to rethink flood hazard assessment globally
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
DOI:10.1002/2016GL070260