{{}A{}} global approach to defining flood seasons

Abstract

Globally, flood catastrophes lead all natural hazards in terms of impacts on society, causing billions of dollars of damages annually. While short-term flood warning systems are improving in number and sophistication, forecasting systems on the order of months to seasons are a rarity, yet may lead to further disaster preparedness. To lay the groundwork for prediction, dominant flood seasons must be adequately defined. A global approach is adopted here, using the PCR-GLOBWB model to define spatial and temporal characteristics of major flood seasons globally. The main flood season is identified using a volume-based threshold technique. In comparison with observations, 40{%} (50{%}) of locations at a station (sub-basin) scale have identical peak months and 81{%} (89{%}) are within 1 month, indicating strong agreement between model and observed flood seasons. Model defined flood seasons are additionally found to well represent actual flood records from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, further substantiating the models ability to reproduce the appropriate flood season. Minor flood seasons are also defined for regions with bi-modal streamflow climatology. Properly defining flood seasons can lead to prediction through association of streamflow with local and large-scale hydroclimatic indicators, and eventual integration into early warning systems for informed advanced planning and management. This is especially attractive for regions with limited observations and/or little capacity to develop early warning flood systems.