Historical Changes in Extreme Floods in the United States
Abstract
A number of recent studies have analyzed historical trends in annual peak flood series; however, few studies have analyzed changes in extreme floods and no known study has examined this for the United States. Furthermore, placing recent observations in the context of historical conditions is common in the climatology community but less so in hydrology. Such context for extreme floods is important and enhances our understanding of outliers in the occurrence of extreme events. Using a dataset of streamgages located across the United States that are relatively unaffected by dams, diversions, or land-cover change, the largest floods at each gage were characterized by the probability that extreme floods have occurred more frequently in the recent past. Using a regional approach we also analyzed whether annual and seasonal extreme floods have been changing in number over time.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H51L1453A
- Keywords:
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- 1817 Extreme events;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1821 Floods;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1833 Hydroclimatology;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1860 Streamflow;
- HYDROLOGY