IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/nathaz/v60y2012i3p1085-1111.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Dettinger
  • F. Martin Ralph
  • Mimi Hughes
  • Tapash Das
  • Paul Neiman
  • Dale Cox
  • Gary Estes
  • David Reynolds
  • Robert Hartman
  • Daniel Cayan
  • Lucy Jones

Abstract

The USGS Multihazards Project is working with numerous agencies to evaluate and plan for hazards and damages that could be caused by extreme winter storms impacting California. Atmospheric and hydrological aspects of a hypothetical storm scenario have been quantified as a basis for estimation of human, infrastructure, economic, and environmental impacts for emergency-preparedness and flood-planning exercises. In order to ensure scientific defensibility and necessary levels of detail in the scenario description, selected historical storm episodes were concatentated to describe a rapid arrival of several major storms over the state, yielding precipitation totals and runoff rates beyond those occurring during the individual historical storms. This concatenation allowed the scenario designers to avoid arbitrary scalings and is based on historical occasions from the 19th and 20th Centuries when storms have stalled over the state and when extreme storms have arrived in rapid succession. Dynamically consistent, hourly precipitation, temperatures, barometric pressures (for consideration of storm surges and coastal erosion), and winds over California were developed for the so-called ARkStorm scenario by downscaling the concatenated global records of the historical storm sequences onto 6- and 2-km grids using a regional weather model of January 1969 and February 1986 storm conditions. The weather model outputs were then used to force a hydrologic model to simulate ARkStorm runoff, to better understand resulting flooding risks. Methods used to build this scenario can be applied to other emergency, nonemergency and non-California applications. Copyright The Author(s) 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Dettinger & F. Martin Ralph & Mimi Hughes & Tapash Das & Paul Neiman & Dale Cox & Gary Estes & David Reynolds & Robert Hartman & Daniel Cayan & Lucy Jones, 2012. "Design and quantification of an extreme winter storm scenario for emergency preparedness and planning exercises in California," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 60(3), pages 1085-1111, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:60:y:2012:i:3:p:1085-1111
    DOI: 10.1007/s11069-011-9894-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-011-9894-5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11069-011-9894-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christine M. Albano & Maureen I. McCarthy & Michael D. Dettinger & Stephanie A. McAfee, 2021. "Techniques for constructing climate scenarios for stress test applications," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1-25, February.
    2. Patrick Barnard & Maarten Ormondt & Li Erikson & Jodi Eshleman & Cheryl Hapke & Peter Ruggiero & Peter Adams & Amy Foxgrover, 2014. "Development of the Coastal Storm Modeling System (CoSMoS) for predicting the impact of storms on high-energy, active-margin coasts," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 74(2), pages 1095-1125, November.
    3. Xin He & Simon Stisen & Marianne B. Wiese & Hans Jørgen Henriksen, 2016. "Designing a Hydrological Real-Time System for Surface Water and Groundwater in Denmark with Engagement of Stakeholders," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 30(5), pages 1785-1802, March.
    4. Xin He & Simon Stisen & Marianne Wiese & Hans Henriksen, 2016. "Designing a Hydrological Real-Time System for Surface Water and Groundwater in Denmark with Engagement of Stakeholders," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 30(5), pages 1785-1802, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:60:y:2012:i:3:p:1085-1111. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.