Estimation of a possible maximum flood event in the Tone River basin, Japan caused by a tropical cyclone

The damage to society caused by tropical cyclones depends largely on the storm track relative to geography. A procedure is proposed to generate different typhoon tracks deviating from the original track of a given reference case. In this procedure, the position of a typhoon is artificially shifted at a certain time before landing in a physically consistent way by applying potential vorticity inversion methodology. After shifting the typhoon position, the subsequent progress is again simulated by a mesoscale weather model. The procedure is applied to a strong typhoon that emerged in a global warming experiment using an atmospheric general circulation model. Various realizations of typhoon landfall cases are generated. Using the output of a suite of realization of different tracks, the worst case scenario is discussed in terms of the river discharge in the Tone River basin, Japan. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.