scholarly journals The Role of Hydrological Initial Conditions on Atmospheric River Floods in the Russian River Basin

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 1667-1686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Cao ◽  
Ali Mehran ◽  
F. Martin Ralph ◽  
Dennis P. Lettenmaier
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Extreme Precipitation ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Winter Precipitation ◽  
Antecedent Soil Moisture ◽  
Coastal Watershed ◽  
Antecedent Precipitation ◽  
Russian River

Abstract A body of work over the last decade or so has demonstrated that most major floods along the U.S. West Coast are attributable to atmospheric rivers (ARs). Recent studies suggest that observed changes in extreme precipitation associated with a general warming of the western United States have not necessarily led to corresponding changes in floods, and changes in antecedent hydrological conditions could be a primary missing link. Here we examine the role of antecedent soil moisture (ASM) conditions on historical AR flooding on California’s Russian River basin, a coastal watershed whose winter precipitation extremes are dominated by ARs. We examined the effect of observed warming on ASM for the period 1950–2017. We first constructed an hourly precipitation product at 1/32° spatial resolution. We used the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) to estimate storm total runoff volumes and soil moisture. We found that up to 95% of peaks-over-threshold (POT) extreme discharge events were associated with ARs. The storm runoff–precipitation ratio generally increased with wetter prestorm conditions, and the relationship was stronger as drainage area increased. We found no trends in extreme precipitation but weak downward trends in extreme discharge. The latter were mostly consistent with weak downward trends in the first 2-day storm precipitation. We found no trends in ASM; however, ASM was significantly correlated with peak flow. The ASM was affected more by antecedent precipitation than evapotranspiration, and hence temperature increases had weak effects on ASM.

scholarly journals Floods due to Atmospheric Rivers along the U.S. West Coast: The Role of Antecedent Soil Moisture in a Warming Climate

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 1827-1845 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Cao ◽  
Alexander Gershunov ◽  
Tamara Shulgina ◽  
F. Martin Ralph ◽  
Ning Sun ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
River Basin ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Extreme Precipitation ◽  
Antecedent Soil Moisture ◽  
Extreme Precipitation Events ◽  
Warming Climate ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Precipitation Events

AbstractPrecipitation extremes are projected to become more frequent along the U.S. West Coast due to increased atmospheric river (AR) activity, but the frequency of less intense precipitation events may decrease. Antecedent soil moisture (ASM) conditions can have a large impact on flood responses, especially if prestorm precipitation decreases. Taken together with increased antecedent evaporative demand due to warming, this would result in reduced soil moisture at the onset of extreme precipitation events. We examine the impact of ASM on AR-related floods in a warming climate in three basins that form a transect along the U.S. Pacific Coast: the Chehalis River basin in Washington, the Russian River basin in Northern California, and the Santa Margarita River basin in Southern California. We ran the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) over the three river basins using forcings downscaled from 10 global climate models (GCMs). We examined the dynamic role of ASM by comparing the changes in the largest 50, 100, and 150 extreme events in two periods, 1951–2000 and 2050–99. In the Chehalis basin, the projected fraction of AR-related extreme discharge events slightly decreases. In the Russian basin, this fraction increases, however, and more substantially so in the Santa Margarita basin. This is due to increases in AR-related extreme precipitation events, as well as the fact that the relationship of extreme precipitation to extreme discharge is strengthened by projected increases in year-to-year volatility of annual precipitation in California, which increases the likelihood of concurrent occurrence of large storms and wet ASM conditions.

scholarly journals Do small and large floods have the same drivers of change? A regional attribution analysis in Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Bertola ◽  
Alberto Viglione ◽  
Sergiy Vorogushyn ◽  
David Lun ◽  
Bruno Merz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Return Period ◽  
Extreme Precipitation ◽  
Gumbel Distribution ◽  
Secondary Importance ◽  
Antecedent Soil Moisture ◽  
Covariate Data ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Flood Quantiles ◽  
Flood Peaks

Abstract. Recent studies have shown evidence of increasing and decreasing trends in mean annual floods and flood quantiles across Europe. Studies attributing observed changes in flood peaks to their drivers have mostly focused on mean annual floods. This paper proposes a new framework for attributing flood changes to potential drivers, as a function of return period (T), in a regional context. We assume flood peaks to follow a non-stationary regional Gumbel distribution, where the median flood and the 100-year growth factor are used as parameters. They are allowed to vary in time and between catchments as a function of the drivers quantified by covariates. The elasticities of floods with respect to the drivers and the contributions of the drivers to flood changes are estimated by Bayesian inference. The prior distributions of the elasticities of flood quantiles to the drivers are estimated by hydrological reasoning and from the literature. The attribution model is applied to European flood and covariate data and aims at attributing the observed flood trend patterns to specific drivers for different return periods. We analyse flood discharge records from 2370 hydrometric stations in Europe over the period 1960–2010. Extreme precipitation, antecedent soil moisture and snowmelt are the potential drivers of flood change considered in this study. Results show that, in northwestern Europe, extreme precipitation mainly contributes to changes in both the median (q2) and 100-year flood (q100), while the contributions of antecedent soil moisture are of secondary importance. In southern Europe, both antecedent soil moisture and extreme precipitation contribute to flood changes, and their relative importance depends on the return period. Antecedent soil moisture is the main contributor to changes in q2, while the contributions of the two drivers to changes in larger floods (T > 10 years) are comparable. In eastern Europe, snowmelt drives changes in both q2 and q100.

Data-based attribution of changes in flood quantiles across Europe between 1960 and 2010

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Bertola ◽  
Alberto Viglione ◽  
Sergiy Vorogushyn ◽  
David Lun ◽  
Bruno Merz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Return Period ◽  
Extreme Precipitation ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Flood Frequency ◽  
Antecedent Soil Moisture ◽  
Flood Quantiles ◽  
Comparable Magnitude ◽  
Large Floods

<p>Changes in European floods during past decades have been analysed and detected by several studies. These studies typically focused on the mean flood behaviour, without distinguishing small and large floods. In this work, we investigate the causes of the detected flood trends across Europe over five decades (1960-2010), as a function of the return period. We adopt a regional non-stationary flood frequency approach to attribute observed flood changes to potential drivers, used as covariates of the parameters of the regional probability distribution of floods. The elasticities of floods with respect to the drivers and the regional contributions of the drivers to changes in flood quantiles associated with small and large return periods (i.e. 2-year and 100-year floods, respectively) are estimated by Bayesian inference, with prior information on the elasticity parameters obtained from expert knowledge and the literature. The data-based attribution approach is applied to annual maximum flood discharge seires from 2370 hydrometric stations in Europe. Extreme precipitation, antecedent soil moisture and snowmelt are the potential drivers considered. Results show that extreme precipitation mainly contributes to positive flood changes in North-western Europe. Both antecedent soil moisture and extreme precipitation contribute to negative flood changes in Southern Europe, with relative contributions varying with the return period. Antecedent soil moisture contributes the most to changes in small floods (i.e. T=2-10 years), while the two drivers contribute with comparable magnitude to changes in more extreme events. In eastern Europe, snowmelt clearly drives negative changes in both small and large floods.</p>

scholarly journals Understanding the Impacts of Soil Moisture Initial Conditions on NWP in the Context of Land–Atmosphere Coupling

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 793-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Santanello Jr. ◽  
Patricia Lawston ◽  
Sujay Kumar ◽  
Eli Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Land Surface Model ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Coupled Models ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Soil Moisture Initialization

Abstract The role of soil moisture in NWP has gained more attention in recent years, as studies have demonstrated impacts of land surface states on ambient weather from diurnal to seasonal scales. However, soil moisture initialization approaches in coupled models remain quite diverse in terms of their complexity and observational roots, while assessment using bulk forecast statistics can be simplistic and misleading. In this study, a suite of soil moisture initialization approaches is used to generate short-term coupled forecasts over the U.S. Southern Great Plains using NASA’s Land Information System (LIS) and NASA Unified WRF (NU-WRF) modeling systems. This includes a wide range of currently used initialization approaches, including soil moisture derived from “off the shelf” products such as atmospheric models and land data assimilation systems, high-resolution land surface model spinups, and satellite-based soil moisture products from SMAP. Results indicate that the spread across initialization approaches can be quite large in terms of soil moisture conditions and spatial resolution, and that SMAP performs well in terms of heterogeneity and temporal dynamics when compared against high-resolution land surface model and in situ soil moisture estimates. Case studies are analyzed using the local land–atmosphere coupling (LoCo) framework that relies on integrated assessment of soil moisture, surface flux, boundary layer, and ambient weather, with results highlighting the critical role of inherent model background biases. In addition, simultaneous assessment of land versus atmospheric initial conditions in an integrated, process-level fashion can help address the question of whether improvements in traditional NWP verification statistics are achieved for the right reasons.

scholarly journals Estimation of antecedent wetness conditions for flood modelling in Northern Morocco

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 9361-9390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Tramblay ◽  
R. Bouaicha ◽  
L. Brocca ◽  
W. Dorigo ◽  
C. Bouvier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Flood Events ◽  
Catchment Scale ◽  
Ungauged Catchments ◽  
Sensing Data ◽  
Antecedent Precipitation

Abstract. In Northern Morocco are located most of the dams and reservoirs of the country, while this region is affected by severe rainfall events causing floods. To improve the management of the water regulation structures, there is a need to develop rainfall-runoff models to both maximize the storage capacity and reduce the risks caused by floods. In this study, a model is developed to reproduce the flood events for a 655 km2 catchment located upstream of the 6th largest dam of the Morocco. Constrained by data availability, a standard event-based model was developed for hourly discharge using 16 flood events that occurred between 1984 and 2008. The model was found satisfactory to reproduce the runoff and the temporal evolution of floods, even with limited rainfall data. Several antecedent wetness conditions estimators for the catchment were compared with the initial condition of the model. These estimators include the discharge of the previous days, the antecedent precipitation index and a continuous daily soil moisture accounting model (SMA). The SMA model performed the best to estimate the initial conditions of the model, with R2=0.9. Its daily output has been compared with ASCAT and AMSR-E remote sensing data products, both were able to reproduce with accuracy the daily soil moisture dynamics at the catchment scale. This same approach could be implemented in other catchments of this region for operational purposes. The results of this study indicate the potential usefulness of remote sensing data to estimate the soil moisture conditions in the case of ungauged catchments in Northern Africa.

scholarly journals The relative importance of antecedent soil moisture and precipitation in flood generation in the middle and lower Yangtze River basin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheng Ye ◽  
Jin Wang ◽  
Qihua Ran ◽  
Xiuxiu Chen ◽  
Lin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Yangtze River Basin ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
Economic Losses ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Antecedent Soil Moisture ◽  
Lower Yangtze ◽  
Flood Generation

Abstract. Floods have caused severe environmental and social economic losses worldwide in human history, and are projected to exacerbate due to climate change. Many floods are caused by heavy rainfall with highly saturated soil, however, the relative importance of rainfall and antecedent soil moisture and how it changes from place to place has not been fully understood. Here we examined annual floods from more than 200 hydrological stations in the middle and lower Yangtze River basin. Our results indicate that the dominant factor of flood generation shifts from rainfall to antecedent soil moisture with the increase of watershed area. The ratio of the relative importance of antecedent soil moisture and daily rainfall (SPR) is positively correlated with topographic wetness index and has a negative correlation with the magnitude of annual floods. This linkage between watershed characteristics that are easy to measure and the dominant flood generation mechanism provides a quantitative method for flood control and early warnings in ungauged watersheds in the middle and lower Yangtze River basin.

scholarly journals Effects of antecedent soil moisture on runoff modeling in small semiarid watersheds of southeastern Arizona

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 6227-6256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Zhang ◽  
H. Wei ◽  
M. A. Nearing
Keyword(s):  
Soil Moisture ◽  
Initial Conditions ◽  
Rain Event ◽  
Rainfall Runoff ◽  
Antecedent Soil Moisture ◽  
Runoff Modeling ◽  
Semiarid Watersheds ◽  
Walnut Gulch ◽  
Semiarid Rangeland

Abstract. Antecedent soil moisture prior to a rain event influences the rainfall-runoff relationship. Very few studies have looked at the effects of antecedent soil moisture on runoff modeling sensitivities in arid and semi-arid areas. This study examines the influence of initial soil moisture on model runoff prediction capability in small semiarid watersheds using model sensitivity and by comparing the use of antecedent vs. average long term soil water content for defining the model initial conditions for the modified Green-Ampt Mein-Larson model within the Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion Model (RHEM). Measured rainfall, runoff, and soil moisture data from four semiarid rangeland watersheds ranging in size from 0.34 to 4.53 ha on the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed in southeastern Arizona, USA, were used. Results showed that: (a) there were no significant correlations between measured runoff ratio and antecedent soil moisture in any of the four watersheds; (b) average sensitivities of simulated runoff amounts and peaks to antecedent soil moisture were 0.05 mm and 0.18 mm h−1, respectively, with each 1 % change in antecedent soil moisture; (c) runoff amounts and peaks simulated with long term average soil moisture were statistically equivalent to those simulated with measured antecedent soil moisture. The relative lack of sensitivity of modeled runoff to antecedent soil moisture in this case is contrary to results reported in other studies, and is largely due to the fact that the surface soil is nearly always very dry in this environment.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document