Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Concurrent Precipitation Extremes for Vulnerability Assessments

Exposure of water resources under concurrent precipitation extremes (multiple places, same time) for small scale watersheds are often not studied. Exposure represents the degree of stress on the systems and is a component of vulnerability assessment. Three concurrent extreme precipitation events occurred over south Asia, Europe and Canada during June 2013. Wide-spread damage, threat to human lives and economic losses (~$ 12 billion in total) were incurred. The present study analyzes the large-scale atmospheric drivers (such as meridional wind, North Atlantic Oscillation) associated with these concurrent extremes. The initiation and decay of these extreme events and how useful are atmospheric teleconnection patterns in explaining these events are examined using Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-SatellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) and NCEP-NCAR reanalysis data sets. This study will be carried out using statistical (composite analysis) and dynamical (identifying teleconnection pattern) methods. The preliminary results show that these extreme events are associated with the teleconnection patterns that link the extra tropical weather events with tropics. The teleconnection patterns that originate from the North Atlantic, are associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation and its downstream extensions. The findings from the study will have implications on the prediction of extreme events as well as its impacts on water resource and vulnerability assessments in multiple scales ranging from local and small watershed challenges to global scales.