Simulating changes in precipitation associated with the 2011 US Mid-West floods
Abstract
Large floods within the Ohio River basin have been known to occur on a few occasions during the past century, and are associated with an eastward shift of the usual synoptic system that transports moisture inland from the gulf of Mexico. Here we focus on the damaging floods of spring 2011, which were associated with heavy spring rainfalls following large winter snowfalls. We take a first look at a medium-sized (order 50-member) ensemble of simulations of Mid-West US precipitation, generated with the global CAM5.1 under conditions representing the large-scale atmospheric and oceanic conditions for spring 2011 -- with a view to downscaling and feeding this precipitation in to a hydrology model to determine the odds of the observed magnitude of floods occurring. Furthermore, we look at a parallel ensemble of simulations generated under hypothetical spring 2011 conditions in which anthropogenic climate drivers were not present, in order determine the change (if any) in odds of flood occurrence, as per a Probabilistic Event Attribution framework.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMGC21A0823P
- Keywords:
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- 1655 GLOBAL CHANGE Water cycles;
- 1637 GLOBAL CHANGE Regional climate change;
- 1803 HYDROLOGY Anthropogenic effects;
- 4313 NATURAL HAZARDS Extreme events