scholarly journals Rainstorms able to induce flash floods in a Mediterranean-climate region (Calabria, southern Italy)

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 2049-2078 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. G. Terranova ◽  
S. L. Gariano
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Climate ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Flash Flood ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Flash Floods ◽  
Rain Gauges ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Preliminary Validation ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Landslides And Debris Flows

Abstract. Heavy rainstorms often induce flash flooding, one of the natural disasters most responsible for damage to man-made infrastructure and loss of lives, adversely affecting also the opportunities for socio-economic development of Mediterranean Countries. The frequently dramatic damage of flash floods are often detected with sufficient accuracy by post-event surveys, but rainfall causing them are still only roughly characterized. With the aim of improving the understanding of the temporal structure and spatial distribution of heavy rainstorms in the Mediterranean context, a statistical analysis was carried out in Calabria (southern Italy) concerning rainstorms that mainly induced flash floods, but also shallow landslides and debris-flows. Thus a method is proposed – based on the overcoming of heuristically predetermined threshold values of cumulated rainfall, maximum intensity, and kinetic energy of the rainfall event – to select and characterize the rainstorms able to induce flash floods in the Mediterranean-climate Countries. Therefore the obtained (heavy) rainstorms were automatically classified and studied according to their structure in time, localization and extension. Rainfall-runoff watershed models can consequently benefit from the enhanced identification of design storms, with a realistic time structure integrated with the results of the spatial analysis. A survey of flash flood events recorded in the last decades provides a preliminary validation of the method proposed to identify the heavy rainstorms and synthetically describe their characteristics. The notable size of the employed sample, including data with a very detailed resolution in time, that relate to several rain gauges well-distributed throughout the region, give robustness to the obtained results.

scholarly journals Rainstorms able to induce flash floods in a Mediterranean-climate region (Calabria, southern Italy)

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 2423-2434 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. G. Terranova ◽  
S. L. Gariano
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Climate ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Flash Flood ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Flash Floods ◽  
Rain Gauges ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Preliminary Validation ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Landslides And Debris Flows

Abstract. Heavy rainstorms often induce flash flooding, one of the natural disasters most responsible for damage to man-made infrastructures and loss of lives, also adversely affecting the opportunities for socio-economic development of Mediterranean countries. The frequently dramatic damage of flash floods are often detected, with sufficient accuracy, by post-event surveys, but rainfall causing them are still only roughly characterized. With the aim of improving the understanding of the temporal structure and spatial distribution of heavy rainstorms in the Mediterranean context, a statistical analysis was carried out in Calabria (southern Italy) concerning rainstorms that mainly induced flash floods, but also shallow landslides and debris flows. Thus, a method is proposed – based on the overcoming of heuristically predetermined threshold values of cumulated rainfall, maximum intensity, and kinetic energy of the rainfall event – to select and characterize the rainstorms able to induce flash floods in the Mediterranean-climate countries. Therefore, the obtained (heavy) rainstorms were automatically classified and studied according to their structure in time, localization, and extension. Rainfall-runoff watershed models can consequently benefit from the enhanced identification of design storms, with a realistic time structure integrated with the results of the spatial analysis. A survey of flash flood events recorded in the last decades provides a preliminary validation of the method proposed to identify the heavy rainstorms and synthetically describe their characteristics. The notable size of the employed sample, including data with a very detailed resolution in time that relate to several rain gauges well-distributed throughout the region, gives robustness to the obtained results.

scholarly journals Bias Correction of Satellite-Based Rainfall Estimates for Modeling Flash Floods in Semi-Arid regions: Application to Karpuz River, Turkey

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Saber ◽  
Koray Yilmaz
Keyword(s):  
Bias Correction ◽  
Flash Flood ◽  
Flash Floods ◽  
Rainfall Rate ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Flood Events ◽  
Rain Gauges ◽  
Semi Arid ◽  
Rainfall Estimates

Abstract. This study investigates the utility of gauge-corrected satellite-based rainfall estimates in simulating flash floods at Karpuz River - a semi-arid basin in Turkey. Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) product was evaluated with the rain gauge network at monthly and daily time-scales considering various time periods and rainfall rate thresholds. Statistical analysis indicated that GSMaP shows acceptable linear correlation coefficient with rain gauges however suffers from significant underestimation bias. A rainfall rate threshold of 1 mm/month was the best choice to improve the match between GSMaP and rain gauges implying that appropriate threshold selection is critically important for the bias correction. Multiplicative bias correction was applied to GSMaP data using the bias factors calculated between GSMaP and observed rainfall. Hydrological River Basin Environmental Assessment Model (Hydro-BEAM) was used to simulate flash floods at the hourly time scale driven by the corrected GSMaP rainfall data. The model parameters were calibrated for flash flood events during October-December 2007 and then validated for flash flood events during October-December 2009. The results show that the simulated surface runoff hydrographs reasonably coincide with the observed hydrographs.

scholarly journals Limiares de chuva deflagradores de inundações bruscas: metodologia, aplicação e avaliação em ambiente operacional

Revista DAE ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 221 (68) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Luiz Carlos Salgueiro Donato Bacelar ◽  
Aliana Maciel ◽  
Carlos Frederico de Angelis ◽  
Javier Tomasella
Keyword(s):  
Flash Flood ◽  
Flash Floods ◽  
Atmospheric Modeling ◽  
Rainfall Data ◽  
Rainfall Thresholds ◽  
Rain Gauges ◽  
Weather Radars ◽  
Diagnosis And Prognosis ◽  
Historical Series ◽  
Technical Article

The present technical article refers to the methodology, application and evaluation of the first computational tool for diagnosis and prognosis of flash floods, based on rain thresholds, which was implemented in the platform of the National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (Cemaden). From historical series of river levels and rainfall data, a procedure was developed to construct relationships that indicate the amount of rain necessary to increase the probability of flash floods occurring in up to twentyfour hours. Rainfall data from rain gauges, weather radars, satellites and atmospheric modeling are used for real-time monitoring of the pre-es- tablished critical rainfall thresholds, integrated into the monitoring and operation. Three cases of flash flood risk warnings sent after the implementation of the tool were analyzed, which demonstrated a good performance in the anticipation of flash floods hazard situations. O presente artigo refere-se à apresentação da metodologia, aplicação e avaliação da primeira ferramenta computacional para diagnóstico e prognóstico para inundações bruscas, baseada em limiares de chuva, que foi implementada na plataforma do Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alerta de Desastres Naturais (Cemaden). A partir de séries históricas de níveis dos rios e dados pluviométricos, um procedimento foi ela- borado para construir relações que indicam a quantidade de chuva necessária para aumento da probabilidade de ocorrência de inundações bruscas em até vinte e quatro horas. Os dados de precipitação provenientes de pluviômetros, radares meteorológicos, satélites e modelagem atmosférica por conjunto são utilizados para acompanhamento em tempo real dos níveis críticos de chuva pré-estabelecidos, integrados ao monitoramen- to e operação. Foram analisados três casos de alertas de risco às inundações bruscas, enviados após a implementação da ferramenta, que demonstrou um bom desempenho na antecipação de situações de perigo devido às inundações bruscas

scholarly journals Integrated high-resolution dataset of high intensity Euro-Mediterranean flash floods

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Amponsah ◽  
Pierre-Alain Ayral ◽  
Brice Boudevillain ◽  
Christophe Bouvier ◽  
Isabelle Braud ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
High Intensity ◽  
Flash Flood ◽  
Flash Floods ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Radar Rainfall ◽  
Catchment Areas ◽  
Flood Response ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Resolution Dataset

Abstract. This paper describes an integrated, high-resolution dataset of hydro-meteorological variables (rainfall and discharge) concerning a number of high-intensity flash floods that occurred in Europe and in the Mediterranean region from 1991 to 2015. This type of dataset is rare in the scientific literature because flash floods are typically poorly observed hydrological extremes. Valuable features of the dataset (hereinafter referred to as EuroMedeFF database) include i) its coverage of varied hydro-climatic regions, ranging from Continental Europe through the Mediterranean to Arid climates, ii) the high space-time resolution radar-rainfall estimates, and iii) the dense spatial sampling of the flood response, by observed hydrographs and/or flood peak estimates from post-flood surveys. Flash floods included in the database are selected based on the limited upstream catchment areas (up to 3000 km2), the limited storm durations (up to 2 days), and the unit peak flood magnitude. The EuroMedeFF database comprises 49 events that occurred in France, Israel, Italy, Romania, Germany, and Slovenia, and constitutes a sample of rainfall and flood discharge extremes in different climates. The dataset may be of help to hydrologists as well as other scientific communities because it offers benchmark data for the identification and analysis of the hydro-meteorological causative processes, evaluation of flash flood hydrological models and for hydro-meteorological forecast systems. The dataset also provides a template for the analysis of the space-time variability of flash flood-triggered rainfall fields and of the effects of their estimation on the flood response modelling. The dataset is made available to the public as a "public dataset" with the following DOI: (https://doi.org/10.6096/mistrals-hymex.1493).

scholarly journals Brief communication: Preliminary hydro-meteorological analysis of the flash flood of 20 August 2018 on Raganello Gorge, Southern Italy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elenio Avolio ◽  
Ottavio Cavalcanti ◽  
Luca Furnari ◽  
Alfonso Senatore ◽  
Giuseppe Mendicino
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Flash Flood ◽  
Rainfall Event ◽  
Rain Gauges ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
Hydrological Impact ◽  
First Results ◽  
Scientific Report ◽  
Fully Coupled ◽  
Meteorological Analysis

Abstract. On 20 August 2018 a flash flood affected the Raganello Creek (Southern Italy) causing 10 casualties. The rainfall event was so highly localized that the spatial coverage of rain gauges resulted inadequate to measure it, while radar products showed a storm cell with rain peaks of about 70–100 mm/h. This scientific report provides a preliminary hydro-meteorological analysis of the event and evaluates the forecasting skills of a system based on the WRF/WRF-Hydro models, using both one-way and fully-coupled approaches. First results show a satisfactory simulation of the event in terms of both rainfall and hydrological impact.

scholarly journals Brief communication: Preliminary hydro-meteorological analysis of the flash flood of 20 August 2018 in Raganello Gorge, southern Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 1619-1627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elenio Avolio ◽  
Ottavio Cavalcanti ◽  
Luca Furnari ◽  
Alfonso Senatore ◽  
Giuseppe Mendicino
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Flash Flood ◽  
Rainfall Event ◽  
Rain Gauges ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
Hydrological Impact ◽  
First Results ◽  
Scientific Report ◽  
Fully Coupled ◽  
Meteorological Analysis

Abstract. On 20 August 2018 a flash flood affected the Raganello Creek (southern Italy) causing 10 casualties. The rainfall event was so highly localized that the spatial coverage of rain gauges were inadequate to measure it, while radar products showed a storm cell with rain peaks of about 70–100 mm h−1. This scientific report provides a preliminary hydro-meteorological analysis of the event and evaluates the forecasting skills of a system based on the WRF–WRF-Hydro models, using both one-way and fully coupled approaches. The first results show a reasonable simulation of the event in terms of both rainfall and hydrological impact.

scholarly journals Integrated high-resolution dataset of high-intensity European and Mediterranean flash floods

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 1783-1794 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Amponsah ◽  
Pierre-Alain Ayral ◽  
Brice Boudevillain ◽  
Christophe Bouvier ◽  
Isabelle Braud ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
High Intensity ◽  
Flash Flood ◽  
Flash Floods ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Radar Rainfall ◽  
Catchment Areas ◽  
Flood Response ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Resolution Dataset

Abstract. This paper describes an integrated, high-resolution dataset of hydro-meteorological variables (rainfall and discharge) concerning a number of high-intensity flash floods that occurred in Europe and in the Mediterranean region from 1991 to 2015. This type of dataset is rare in the scientific literature because flash floods are typically poorly observed hydrological extremes. Valuable features of the dataset (hereinafter referred to as the EuroMedeFF database) include (i) its coverage of varied hydro-climatic regions, ranging from Continental Europe through the Mediterranean to Arid climates, (ii) the high space–time resolution radar rainfall estimates, and (iii) the dense spatial sampling of the flood response, by observed hydrographs and/or flood peak estimates from post-flood surveys. Flash floods included in the database are selected based on the limited upstream catchment areas (up to 3000 km2), the limited storm durations (up to 2 days), and the unit peak flood magnitude. The EuroMedeFF database comprises 49 events that occurred in France, Israel, Italy, Romania, Germany and Slovenia, and constitutes a sample of rainfall and flood discharge extremes in different climates. The dataset may be of help to hydrologists as well as other scientific communities because it offers benchmark data for the identification and analysis of the hydro-meteorological causative processes, evaluation of flash flood hydrological models and for hydro-meteorological forecast systems. The dataset also provides a template for the analysis of the space–time variability of flash flood triggering rainfall fields and of the effects of their estimation on the flood response modelling. The dataset is made available to the public with the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.6096/MISTRALS-HyMeX.1493.

scholarly journals Lightning and rain dynamic indices as predictors for flash floods events in the Mediterranean

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 57-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Harats ◽  
B. Ziv ◽  
Y. Yair ◽  
V. Kotroni ◽  
U. Dayan
Keyword(s):  
Flash Flood ◽  
Heavy Precipitation ◽  
Flash Floods ◽  
Lightning Activity ◽  
Specific Humidity ◽  
Flood Events ◽  
Funded Project ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Good Concordance ◽  
Short Term Forecasting

Abstract. The FLASH EU funded project aims to observe, analyze and model lightning activity in thunderstorms for use in short term forecasting of flash floods in the Mediterranean region. Two new indices, aimed to assess the potential for heavy precipitation and flash-floods, are proposed and evaluated. The first is a lightning index – the MKI, which is a modified version of the KI-index. The applied index gives more weight to the lower- and mid-level relative humidity. The second is a new rain index, the RDI, which is the integrated product of specific humidity and vertical velocity. With the aim to contribute to the aforementioned objectives, 3 flash flood events, two in Israel and one in Greece are analyzed in the present study, using the 2 proposed indices. The NCEP/NCAR reanalysis database, of 2.5°×2.5° resolution, failed to resolve the meso-scale features of the observed flash flood events. Therefore, the ECWMF database, of 0.5°×0.5° resolution, was used for calculating and displaying the two indices. Comparison between the observed rain and lightning and the respective indices for the two pieces of data was performed for the flash flood events. The results show good concordance of both indices with timing and spatial distribution in 2 of them, while in one of them is displaced by more than 50 km. The good agreement in locating the maximum between the MKI and RDI suggests that the proposed indices are good predictors for both intense lightning activity and torrential rain and consequently, for potential flash floods.

scholarly journals When Citizen Science highlights alien invasive species in France: the case of Indochina mantis, Hierodula patellifera (Insecta, Mantodea, Mantidae)

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Moulin
Keyword(s):  
Invasive Species ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Mediterranean Climate ◽  
Alien Invasive Species ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
First Time ◽  
Human Transport

Originally from Asia, Hierodula patellifera (Serville, 1839) occurs several Mediterranean countries, such as Italy. These arrivals could come from many factors: new pets or commercial human transport. The presence of Hierodula patellifera (Serville, 1839) is here reported for the first time in France. A well settled and probably widespread population of this species is here discussed as its adaptability to the Mediterranean climate. Some considerations on the potential impacts on the local ecosystems and its future spreading in Europe as an invasive species are given.

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