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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Hayley Fowler
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2024 The AuthorsHydrologists and civil engineers often use design storms to assess flash flood hazards in urban, rural, and mountainous catchments. These synthetic storms are not representations of real extreme rainfall events, but rather simplified versions parameterized to mimic extreme precipitation statistics often obtained from intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves. To construct design storms for the future climate, it is thus necessary first to recalculate IDF curves to represent rainfall under warmer conditions. We propose a framework for adjusting IDF curves and design storms to future climate conditions using the TENAX model, a novel statistical approach that can provide future short-duration precipitation return levels based on projected temperature changes. For most applications, information from climate models at the daily scale can be used to construct design storms at the sub-hourly scale without any downscaling or bias adjustment. Our approach is illustrated through a re-parameterization of the Chicago Design Storm (CDS) in the context of climate change. As a case study demonstration, we apply the TENAX model to data from the city of Zurich to calculate changes in the historical IDF curve for durations ranging from 10 min to 3 h. We then construct synthetic 100-year return period design storms based on the CDS for present and future climates and use the CAFlood model to produce flood inundation maps to assess changes in flood hazard. The codes for adapting design storms to climate change are simple to implement, easily applicable by practitioners, and made freely available.
Author(s): Peleg N, Wright DB, Fowler HJ, Leitao JP, Sharma A, Marra F
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Advances in Water Resources
Year: 2024
Volume: 193
Print publication date: 01/11/2024
Online publication date: 17/09/2024
Acceptance date: 12/09/2024
Date deposited: 30/09/2024
ISSN (print): 0309-1708
ISSN (electronic): 1872-9657
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2024.104823
DOI: 10.1016/j.advwatres.2024.104823
Data Access Statement: The TENAX-CDS model is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/ zenodo.10491542 (Peleg and Marra, 2024), including the data necessary to reproduce the results for the Zurich (Affoltern) station as an example. Precipitation and temperature data for the Zurich (Affoltern) station in Switzerland shown in the case study is provided by MeteoSwiss and are freely accessible from the IDAWEB at https://gate.meteoswiss.ch/idaweb.
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