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Rethinking flood hazard at the global scale
Author(s) -
Schumann Guy J.P.,
Stampoulis Dimitrios,
Smith Andrew M.,
Sampson Christopher C.,
Andreadis Konstantinos M.,
Neal Jeffrey C.,
Bates Paul D.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2016gl070260
Subject(s) - floodplain , streamflow , flood myth , hazard , environmental science , flooding (psychology) , precipitation , 100 year flood , hydrology (agriculture) , climatology , flood forecasting , flood stage , scale (ratio) , hazard analysis , meteorology , physical geography , geology , geography , drainage basin , cartography , psychology , chemistry , geotechnical engineering , archaeology , organic chemistry , aerospace engineering , engineering , psychotherapist
Flooding is governed by the amount and timing of water spilling out of channels and moving across adjacent land, often with little warning. At global scales, flood hazard is typically inferred from streamflow, precipitation or from satellite images, yielding a largely incomplete picture. Thus, at present, the floodplain inundation variables, which define hazard, cannot be accurately predicted nor can they be measured at large scales. Here we present, for the first time, a complete continuous long‐term simulation of floodplain water depths at continental scale. Simulations of floodplain inundation were performed with a hydrodynamic model based on gauged streamflow for the Australian continent from 1973 to 2012. We found the magnitude and timing of floodplain storage to differ significantly from streamflow in terms of their distribution. Furthermore, floodplain volume gave a much sharper discrimination of high hazard and low hazard periods than discharge. These discrepancies have implications for characterizing flood hazard at the global scale from precipitation and streamflow records alone, suggesting that simulations and observations of inundation are also needed.