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Natural hazards in Australia: floods

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Abstract

Floods are caused by a number of interacting factors, making it remarkably difficult to explain changes in flood hazard. This paper reviews the current understanding of historical trends and variability in flood hazard across Australia. Links between flood and rainfall trends cannot be made due to the influence of climate processes over a number of spatial and temporal scales as well as landscape changes that affect the catchment response. There are also still considerable uncertainties in future rainfall projections, particularly for sub-daily extreme rainfall events. This is in addition to the inherent uncertainty in hydrological modelling such as antecedent conditions and feedback mechanisms.

Research questions are posed based on the current state of knowledge. These include a need for high-resolution climate modelling studies and efforts in compiling and analysing databases of sub-daily rainfall and flood records. Finally there is a need to develop modelling frameworks that can deal with the interaction between climate processes at different spatio-temporal scales, so that historical flood trends can be better explained and future flood behaviour understood.

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Notes

  1. http://www.csiro.au/en/Research/LWF/Areas/Water-resources/Assessing-water-resources/Sustainable-yields

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Acknowledgments

This paper was a result of collaboration through the working group ‘Trends and Extremes’ as part of the Australian Water and Energy Exchanges Initiative (OzEWEX). J. Evans was supported by the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT110100576. A. Van Dijk was supported through Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number DP40103679). S. Westra and F. Johnson were supported through Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project DP150100411. The constructive comments from the anonymous reviewers helped to improve the clarity of the paper.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Alexandra Rouillard

    Present address: Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen K, Denmark

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UNSW Water Research Centre, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

    Fiona Johnson

  2. School of Engineering and ICT, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

    Christopher J. White

  3. Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

    Christopher J. White

  4. Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Albert van Dijk

  5. Land and Water, Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation, Canberra, Australia

    Marie Ekstrom

  6. Climate Change Research Centre & ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

    Jason P. Evans

  7. Environment and Research Division, Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia

    Dörte Jakob

  8. Centre for Water, Climate and Land Use (CWCL), Faculty of Science and IT, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia

    Anthony S. Kiem

  9. School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    Michael Leonard & Seth Westra

  10. School of Plant Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia

    Alexandra Rouillard

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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fiona Johnson.

Additional information

This article is part of a Special Issue on “The effect of historical and future climate changes on natural hazards in Australia” edited by Seth Westra, Chris White and Anthony Kiem.

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Johnson, F., White, C.J., van Dijk, A. et al. Natural hazards in Australia: floods. Climatic Change 139, 21–35 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1689-y

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