Design and quantification of an extreme winter storm scenario for emergency preparedness and planning exercises in California

Dettinger, Michael D.; Ralph, F. Martin; Hughes, Mimi; Das, Tapash; Neiman, Paul J.; Cox, Dale A.; Estes, Gary; Reynolds, David W.; Hartman, Robert; Cayan, Daniel R.; Jones, Lucy

doi:10.1007/s11069-011-9894-5

Cited by 46 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…We would not suggest that the quantitative flood discharges computed using VIC be used for structural designs or details of flood management. From these analyses, we conclude (as others have, for example Dettinger et al 2004;Miller et al 2003;Anderson et al 2006;Dettinger et al 2009;Raff et al 2009) that flood regimes in Californian Sierra Nevada are vulnerable to change with future climate change. With the models used here, flood magnitudes and frequencies tend overall (but not universally) to increase, even under scenarios with significant drying.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

“…VIC has been used extensively in a variety of water resources applications from studies of climate variability, hydrologic forecasting and climate change studies (for example, Nijssen et al 2001;Maurer et al 2002;Sheffield and Wood 2007;Wood and Lettenmaier 2006;Dettinger et al 2011;Cayan et al 2010). Mote et al (2005) found reasonable agreement between the spatial pattern of observed SWE and the VIC simulated values.…”

Section: Hydrological Modelmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Milly et al (2008) argued "now is an opportune moment to update the analytic strategies used for planning such grand investments under an uncertain and changing climate." More recently, Dettinger et al (2009) and Raff et al (2009) predicted general increases in flood magnitude with climate change.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Potential increase in floods in California’s Sierra Nevada under future climate projections

et al. 2011

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California's mountainous topography, exposure to occasional heavily moisture-laden storm systems, and varied communities and infrastructures in low lying areas make it highly vulnerable to floods. An important question facing the state-in terms of protecting the public and formulating water management responses to climate change-is "how might future climate changes affect flood characteristics in California?" To help address this, we simulate floods on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the state's primary catchment, based on downscaled daily precipitation and temperature projections from three General Circulation Models (GCMs). These climate projections are fed into the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model, and the VIC-simulated streamflows and hydrologic conditions, from historical and from projected climate change runs, allow us to evaluate possible changes in annual maximum 3-day flood magnitudes and frequencies of floods. By the end of the 21st Century, all projections yield larger-than-historical floods, for both the Northern Sierra Nevada (NSN) and for the Southern Sierra Nevada (SSN). The increases in flood magnitude are statistically significant (at p<=0.01) for all the three GCMs in the period 2051-2099. The frequency of flood events above selected historical thresholds also increases under projections from CNRM CM3 and NCAR PCM1 climate models, while under the third scenario, GFDL CM2.1, frequencies remain constant or decline slightly, owing to an overall drying trend.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Section: Hydrological Modelmentioning

confidence: 89%

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Potential increase in floods in California’s Sierra Nevada under future climate projections

et al. 2011

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“…(1) in section 2c] combines with near-neutral moist static stability (Ralph et al 2005;Neiman et al 2008a) and strong orographic forcing (e.g., Smith et al 2010) to produce large amounts of precipitation (Neiman et al 2008b;Dettinger et al 2004). Consequently, AR storms have been linked with flooding and are a critical component of the water budget of the western United States (Ralph et al 2006;Dettinger et al 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Landfall and Inland Penetration of a Flood-Producing Atmospheric River in Arizona. Part II: Sensitivity of Modeled Precipitation to Terrain Height and Atmospheric River Orientation

Hughes

Mahoney

Neiman

et al. 2014

Journal of Hydrometeorology

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This manuscript documents numerical modeling experiments based on a January 2010 atmospheric river (AR) event that caused extreme precipitation in Arizona. The control experiment (CNTL), using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model with 3-km grid spacing, agrees well with observations. Sensitivity experiments in which 1) model grid spacing decreases sequentially from 81 to 3 km and 2) upstream terrain is elevated are used to assess the sensitivity of interior precipitation amounts and horizontal water vapor fluxes to model grid resolution and height of Baja California terrain. The drying ratio, a measure of airmass drying after passage across terrain, increases with Baja's terrain height and decreases with coarsened grid spacing. Subsequently, precipitation across Arizona decreases as the Baja terrain height increases, although it changes little with coarsened grid spacing. Northern Baja's drying ratio is much larger than that of southern Baja. Thus, ARs with a southerly orientation, with water vapor transports that can pass south of the higher mountains of northern Baja and then cross the Gulf of California, can produce large precipitation amounts in Arizona. Further experiments are performed using a linear model (LM) of orographic precipitation for a central-Arizona-focused subdomain. The actual incidence angle of the AR (2118) is close to the optimum angle for large region-mean precipitation. Changes in region-mean precipitation amounts are small (;6%) owing to AR angle changes; however, much larger changes in basinmean precipitation of up to 33% occur within the range of physically plausible AR angles tested. Larger LM precipitation sensitivity is seen with the Baja-terrain-modification experiments than with AR-angle modification.

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“…The common underlying hydrometeorological factor that contributed to the 1996-1997 flooding episode was the presence of "atmospheric rivers" (ARs), which accounted for advective transport of water vapor along highly concentrated streamlines (Dettinger et al, 2012). The ARs that extended over much of California and the Pacific Northwest, when assisted with a strong low-level wind, carried a large amount of moisture from the Pacific Ocean that eventually precipitated inland.…”

Section: Study Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of surface properties and atmospheric disturbances caused by post-dam alterations of land use/land cover

Woldemichael

Hossain

Pielke

2014

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. This study adopted a differential land-use/landcover (LULC) analysis to evaluate dam-triggered landatmosphere interactions for a number of LULC scenarios. Two specific questions were addressed: (1) can damtriggered LULC heterogeneities modify surface and energy budget, which, in turn, change regional convergence and precipitation patterns? (2) How extensive is the modification in surface moisture and energy budget altered by damtriggered LULC changes occurring in different climate and terrain features? The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS, version 6.0) was set up for two climatologically and topographically contrasting regions: the American River watershed (ARW), located in California, and the Owyhee River watershed (ORW), located in eastern Oregon. For the selected atmospheric river precipitation event of 29 December 1996 to 3 January 1997, simulations of three pre-defined LULC scenarios are performed. The definition of the scenarios are (1) the "control" scenario, representing the contemporary land use, (2) the "pre-dam" scenario, representing the natural landscape before the construction of the dams and (3) the "non-irrigation" scenario, representing the condition where previously irrigated landscape in the control is transformed to the nearby land-use type. Results indicated that the ARW energy and moisture fluxes were more extensively affected by dam-induced changes in LULC than the ORW. Both regions, however, displayed commonalities in the modification of land-atmosphere processes due to LULC changes, with the control-non-irrigation scenario creating more change than the control-pre-dam scenarios. These commonalities were: (1) the combination of a decrease in temperature (up to 0.15 • C) and an increase at dew point (up to 0.25 • C) was observed; (2) there was a larger fraction of energy partitioned to latent heat flux (up to 10 W m −2 ) that increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and resulted in a larger convective available potential energy (CAPE); (3) low-level wind-flow variation was found to be responsible for pressure gradients that affected localized circulations, moisture advection and convergence. At some locations, an increase in wind speed up to 1.6 m s −1 maximum was observed; (4) there were also areas of well-developed vertical motions responsible for moisture transport from the surface to higher altitudes that enhanced precipitation patterns in the study regions.

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Design and quantification of an extreme winter storm scenario for emergency preparedness and planning exercises in California

Cited by 46 publications

References 34 publications

Potential increase in floods in California’s Sierra Nevada under future climate projections

Potential increase in floods in California’s Sierra Nevada under future climate projections

The Landfall and Inland Penetration of a Flood-Producing Atmospheric River in Arizona. Part II: Sensitivity of Modeled Precipitation to Terrain Height and Atmospheric River Orientation

Evaluation of surface properties and atmospheric disturbances caused by post-dam alterations of land use/land cover

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