Risk of Exceeding Extreme Design Storm Events under Possible Impact of Climate Change
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20, Issue 12
Abstract
Given the risk of intensive storms (the probability of exceeding certain storm intensity one or more times within the project life) of central Alberta is expected to change in the future, a new risk chart is proposed which represents the nonlinear relationship between storm intensity, design project life, and the risk of intensive storms being exceeded within the project life. First, a comparison between estimated risk charts of the past (1914–1995) and the present (1984–2010) for central Alberta shows that the risk of intensive storms occurring has increased for all storm durations in recent years, and the risk had been higher for storms of large return periods (). Given a design project life of 50 years, the average increase in risk is 9%. Second, the uncertainty associated with projecting the risk of intensive storms occurring in 2011–2100 was assessed by considering three special reports on emissions scenarios (SRESs) of four global climate models (GCMs) dynamically downscaled by a regional climate model (RCM), i.e., MM5. Based on storms simulated by MM5 for central Alberta forced by SRES climate scenarios of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for 2011–2100, the median risk for short-duration storms () of a design project life of 25 and 50 years is projected to increase up to 37 and 38%, respectively. In other words, climate change impact could increase the vulnerability of central Alberta to the hazards of flooding by intensive storms in future. The proposed risk chart presents the risk in a straightforward and meaningful way which will be useful for the long-term planning and engineering design of municipal infrastructure.
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Acknowledgments
Gratitude is expressed to Compute Canada’s WestGrid supercomputing resources for modeling the regional climate of central Alberta with MM5, and assistance on technical issues related to its supercomputers. The research reported in this paper was supported by the city of Edmonton and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 20 • Issue 12 • December 2015
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 17, 2014
Accepted: Mar 18, 2015
Published online: May 14, 2015
Discussion open until: Oct 14, 2015
Published in print: Dec 1, 2015
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