An event-based approach to explore selected present and future atmospheric river–induced floods in Western Norway

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate extreme precipitation events caused by atmospheric rivers and compare their flood impact in a warmer climate to current climate using an event-based storyline approach. The study was set up by selecting four high precipitation events from 30 years of present and future climate simulations of the high-resolution global climate model EC-Earth. The two most extreme precipitation events within the selection area for the present and future climate were identified, and EC-Earth was rerun creating 10 perturbed realizations for each event. All realizations were further downscaled with the regional weather prediction model, AROME-MetCoOp. The events were thereafter used as input to the operational Norwegian flood-forecasting model for 37 selected catchments in western Norway, and the magnitude and the spatial pattern of floods were analyzed. The role of the hydrological initial conditions, which are important for the total flooding, were analyzed with a special emphasis on snow and soil moisture excess. The results show that the selected future extreme precipitation events affected more catchments with larger floods, compared to the events from present climate. In addition, multiple realizations of the meteorological forcing and four different hydrological initial conditions, e.g. soil saturation and snow storage, were important for the estimation of the maximum flood level. The meteorological forcing (e.g. the internal variability/perturbed output) accounts for the highest contribution to the spread in flood magnitude; however, for some events and catchments the hydrological initial conditions affected the magnitudes of floods more than the meteorological forcing.