OU researchers partnering with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used computer modeling to predict simply how a lot local weather change will have an effect on extreme flooding — and the outlook is moist.
JJ Gourley is a analysis hydrometeorologist with NOAA and labored on the undertaking.
“You can compare the rain systems that are produced nowadays and then compare those to what they would look like in the future under warmer temperatures and higher humidity and compare those,” Gourley stated. “And what we found is that the rain systems are becoming much larger. They’re covering basically twice the area that they are today.”
Not solely are the programs taking over more actual property, however they’re additionally doubtless to become more extreme. Research findings point out that rainfall quantities will double. This comes after a study published earlier this year by the identical researchers discovered that in flash flood occasions, water ranges will rise considerably sooner and better.
Along with heavier, more frequent and more widespread flooding, the researchers discovered there will even be more seasonal variability, which implies fall and winter will doubtless see more extreme rainfall.
Gourley stated hotter situations within the Mountain West area are inflicting snowpack to soften earlier and sooner. Normally, there’s a buffer interval between when precipitation falls as snow, it accumulates, after which it releases runoff more steadily. It can even create conditions the place rain falls on collected snow and melts it sooner.
In the jap facet of the nation, the story’s a bit completely different. Higher evaporation is inflicting drier soils, which Gourley stated can act as a buffer to rainfall — however solely to a level. Researchers nonetheless present growing flood frequency and magnitude sooner or later.
“If you get warmer temperatures, then the atmosphere can retain much more water vapor. And with much more water vapor, then you can produce higher rainfall rates,” Gourley stated. “Under warmer conditions, you also change some of the dynamics of rain systems as well. You get deeper storms, you get stronger updrafts. And because of that, the scales increase significantly.”
Yang Hong, a professor of hydrology and distant sensing at OU, stated ageing flood infrastructure is an pressing concern. Hundreds of Oklahoma dams are previous their life expectancy, and practically all Oklahoma residents — about 93 % — reside inside 20 miles of a flood management dam.
“That’s alarming,” Hong stated. “I think for scientists, governments and the society, we need to be aware of this possibility. We need to come up with a solution.”
Combined with hurricane occasions just like the one in Florida that took the lives of over 100 individuals, Hong stated the nation goes to face flooding not simply from the skies, however from the coasts.
“I couldn’t believe more than 100 people died in the U.S.,” Hong stated. “We hear this news from some other countries, but I just couldn’t believe it. … It’s going to be a problem that we have to deal with in the future.”
Lower revenue neighborhoods are impacted more severely by flooding and take longer to get well from it. Gourley stated society’s most weak might be bearing the brunt of climate-caused flooding.
“Floods tend to strike vulnerable populations,” Gourley stated. “So folks that are living in low-lying areas, and a lot of transient populations live near streams and creeks, and these are dangerous places to be.”
The researchers stated they’re now trying on the impacts of flooding on particular person communities. Hong stated they’re working with the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations, in addition to Latino communities within the Southeast.
“Impact-based forecasting is something else that we’re working on, to try to get more specific to what affects people,” Gourley stated. “So in other words, where do we have low water crossings? Where do we have people intersecting those low water crossings? And try to identify these trouble points so that forecasters can better highlight those, and then the local people with boots on the ground can go to those regions.”
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