Natural hazards in Australia: floods

Fiona Johnson; Christopher J. White; Albert van Dijk; Marie Ekstrom; Jason P. Evans; Dörte Jakob; Anthony S. Kiem; Michael Leonard; Alexandra Rouillard; Seth Westra

doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1689-y

Natural hazards in Australia: floods

Fiona Johnson^*, Christopher J. White, Albert van Dijk, Marie Ekstrom, Jason P. Evans, Dörte Jakob, Anthony S. Kiem, Michael Leonard, Alexandra Rouillard, Seth Westra

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

100 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Floods are caused by a number of interacting factors, making it remarkably difficult to explain changes in flood hazard. This paper reviews the current understanding of historical trends and variability in flood hazard across Australia. Links between flood and rainfall trends cannot be made due to the influence of climate processes over a number of spatial and temporal scales as well as landscape changes that affect the catchment response. There are also still considerable uncertainties in future rainfall projections, particularly for sub-daily extreme rainfall events. This is in addition to the inherent uncertainty in hydrological modelling such as antecedent conditions and feedback mechanisms. Research questions are posed based on the current state of knowledge. These include a need for high-resolution climate modelling studies and efforts in compiling and analysing databases of sub-daily rainfall and flood records. Finally there is a need to develop modelling frameworks that can deal with the interaction between climate processes at different spatio-temporal scales, so that historical flood trends can be better explained and future flood behaviour understood.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	21-35
Number of pages	15
Journal	Climatic Change
Volume	139
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1689-y
Publication status	Published - 1 Nov 2016

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title = "Natural hazards in Australia: floods",

abstract = "Floods are caused by a number of interacting factors, making it remarkably difficult to explain changes in flood hazard. This paper reviews the current understanding of historical trends and variability in flood hazard across Australia. Links between flood and rainfall trends cannot be made due to the influence of climate processes over a number of spatial and temporal scales as well as landscape changes that affect the catchment response. There are also still considerable uncertainties in future rainfall projections, particularly for sub-daily extreme rainfall events. This is in addition to the inherent uncertainty in hydrological modelling such as antecedent conditions and feedback mechanisms. Research questions are posed based on the current state of knowledge. These include a need for high-resolution climate modelling studies and efforts in compiling and analysing databases of sub-daily rainfall and flood records. Finally there is a need to develop modelling frameworks that can deal with the interaction between climate processes at different spatio-temporal scales, so that historical flood trends can be better explained and future flood behaviour understood.",

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AU - White, Christopher J.

AU - van Dijk, Albert

AU - Ekstrom, Marie

AU - Evans, Jason P.

AU - Jakob, Dörte

AU - Kiem, Anthony S.

AU - Leonard, Michael

AU - Rouillard, Alexandra

AU - Westra, Seth

PY - 2016/11/1

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Natural hazards in Australia: floods

Abstract

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