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Weather and seasonal climate prediction for flood planning in the Yangtze River Basin

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Abstract

This paper describes the use of numerical weather and climate models for predicting severe rainfall anomalies over the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) from several days to several months in advance. Such predictions are extremely valuable, allowing time for proactive flood protection measures to be taken. Specifically, the dynamical climate prediction system (IAP DCP-II), developed by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAP), is applied to YRB rainfall prediction and flood planning. IAP DCP-II employs ensemble prediction with dynamically conditioned perturbations to reduce the uncertainty associated with seasonal climate prediction. IAP DCP-II was shown to successfully predict seasonal YRB summer flooding events based on a 15-year (1980–1994) hindcast experiment and the real-time prediction of two summer flooding events (1999 and 2001). Finally, challenges and opportunities for applying seasonal dynamical forecasting to flood management problems in the YRB are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to thank Dr. Yongguang Wang from National Climate Center, CMA for providing the maps of observed summer precipitation anomalies over China. This work was jointly supported by the CAS Knowledge Innovation Project (KZCX3-SW-221), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grand No: 40221503) and CAS International Partnership Creative Group “The Climate System Model Development and Application Studies”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Zhaohui Lin, Xingkui Xu & Sixiong Zhao

  2. Information and Computer Science, University of Hawaii, 96-045 Ala Ike Street, Pearl City, HI, 96782, USA

    Jason K. Levy

  3. Institute for Applied Geosciences, Darmstadt University of Technology, Schnittspahnstrasse 9, 64287, Darmstadt, Germany

    Jens Hartmann

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  1. Zhaohui Lin
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  2. Jason K. Levy
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  3. Xingkui Xu
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  4. Sixiong Zhao
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Correspondence to Zhaohui Lin.

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Lin, Z., Levy, J.K., Xu, X. et al. Weather and seasonal climate prediction for flood planning in the Yangtze River Basin. Stoch Environ Res Ris Assess 19, 428–437 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-005-0007-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-005-0007-4

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