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Observed and Simulated Characteristics of 2015 Chennai Heavy Rain Event: Impact of Land-Use Change, SST, and High-Resolution Global Analyses

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Abstract

The southern Indian city of Chennai received more than 1200 mm of rainfall between 5 November and 10 December 2015. The record-breaking rain exceeded the previous 24-h precipitation record (290 mm) on 1 and 2 December and resulted in severe urban flooding. Meteorological analysis from observational and reanalysis data sets shows that this rainfall event was the culmination of three synoptic-scale systems with oceanic moisture trajectories. The city has also witnessed dramatic urban sprawl in recent decades, and the feedback of urban heating on regional convection is postulated to be another critical factor in modulating the mesoscale environment and heavy rains. Accordingly, the study seeks to assess whether the Weather Research Forecasting (WRF) modeling system typically used for heavy rain prediction can better simulate this event by considering enhanced meteorological setup and urban feedback. Simulations were conducted using the WRF modeling system with different model configurations for 40 days (00 UTC 1 November until 00 UTC 11 December 2015), with a triple-nested domain and the finest grid spacing of 1.2 km centered over Chennai. The results indicate that the WRF modeling system broadly agrees with the observations, such as from the GPM-IMERG rainfall products. Model experiments also reveal the impact of increased urban built-up area on the rainfall distribution and the improvement in the model results using high-resolution atmospheric and SST initialization. The findings indicate that even for this synoptic-driven event, representing realistic urban land cover can aid the simulation of the heavy urban rainfall.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the IMD (http://www.imd.gov.in), ISRO (http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in), MOSDAC (http://www.mosdac.gov.in/), USGS (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/), ECMWF (http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/), NCAR-UCAR (http://rda.ucar.edu/), Wyoming weather web (http://weather.uwyo.edu/), and GIOVANNI (https://giovanni.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/giovanni/) for providing access for the different datasets used in this study. The infrastructure support received through the Science and Engineering Research Board, Government of India’s sponsored project (EMR/2015/001358), is highly acknowledged. The authors express their gratitude to Prof. Dev Niyogi (Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin), Dr. Sunny Kant (Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi) and Dr. Kasturi Singh (National Atmospheric Research Laboratory, Indian Space Research Organization), for their scientific and technical input during the research work.

Funding

This work was supported by Science and Engineering Research Board (IN), EMR/2015/001358.

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  1. Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, National Institute of Technology Rourkela, Rourkela, Odisha, 769008, India

    Jagabandhu Panda & Sudhansu S. Rath

  2. CSIR Fourth Paradigm Institute, Bengaluru, India

    Sudhansu S. Rath

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  1. Jagabandhu Panda
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Correspondence to Jagabandhu Panda.

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Panda, J., Rath, S.S. Observed and Simulated Characteristics of 2015 Chennai Heavy Rain Event: Impact of Land-Use Change, SST, and High-Resolution Global Analyses. Pure Appl. Geophys. 179, 3391–3409 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-022-03113-w

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