Hydroclimate Drivers and Atmospheric Dynamics of Floods
type: CreativeWork
description: Our preliminary survey showed that most of the recent flood-related studies did not formally explain the physical mechanisms of long-duration and large-peak flood events that can evoke substantial damages to properties and infrastructure systems. These studies also fell short of fully assessing the interactions of coupled ocean-atmosphere and land dynamics which are capable of forcing substantial changes to the flood attributes by governing the exceeding surface flow regimes and moisture source-sink relationships at the spatiotemporal scales important for risk management. This dissertation advances the understanding of the variability in flood duration, peak, volume, and timing at the regional to the global scale, and quantifies their causal mechanisms that include land surface conditions, large-scale climatic patterns, and mesoscale atmospheric teleconnections. Analyzing recent trends in the frequency and duration of global floods indicates that there is a significant upward trend in the statistics of their annual probability distribution, and large-scale climate teleconnections play a major role in modulating this trend. A comprehensive hydroclimate-informed framework is then presented to identify the physical causative relationship between floods of varying duration and peak and their regional land surface conditions, rainfall statistics, and moisture transports and convergences. Then, flood duration is modeled using the antecedent exceeding flow, large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns, interrelated ocean-atmospheric conditions, and dynamics of moisture transport systems in a physically informed Bayesian network framework. Statistical scaling relationships of floods with basin-wide geomorphologic characteristics and precipitation variability are then estimated. This is followed by an understanding of the spatial manifestation of widespread simultaneous heavy precipitation events (SHPEs), including quantifying their risk footprints. Subsequently, an experime…
abstract: Our preliminary survey showed that most of the recent flood-related studies did not formally explain the physical mechanisms of long-duration and large-peak flood events that can evoke substantial damages to properties and infrastructure systems. These studies also fell short of fully assessing the interactions of coupled ocean-atmosphere and land dynamics which are capable of forcing substantial changes to the flood attributes by governing the exceeding surface flow regimes and moisture source-sink relationships at the spatiotemporal scales important for risk management. This dissertation advances the understanding of the variability in flood duration, peak, volume, and timing at the regional to the global scale, and quantifies their causal mechanisms that include land surface conditions, large-scale climatic patterns, and mesoscale atmospheric teleconnections. Analyzing recent trends in the frequency and duration of global floods indicates that there is a significant upward trend in the statistics of their annual probability distribution, and large-scale climate teleconnections play a major role in modulating this trend. A comprehensive hydroclimate-informed framework is then presented to identify the physical causative relationship between floods of varying duration and peak and their regional land surface conditions, rainfall statistics, and moisture transports and convergences. Then, flood duration is modeled using the antecedent exceeding flow, large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns, interrelated ocean-atmospheric conditions, and dynamics of moisture transport systems in a physically informed Bayesian network framework. Statistical scaling relationships of floods with basin-wide geomorphologic characteristics and precipitation variability are then estimated. This is followed by an understanding of the spatial manifestation of widespread simultaneous heavy precipitation events (SHPEs), including quantifying their risk footprints. Subsequently, an experime…
author: Najibi, Nasser
keywords: Floods, Hydrology, Atmosphere, Infrastructure Systems, Statistical Modeling, Civil Engineering, Climate, Environmental Engineering, Fresh Water Studies, Hydraulic Engineering, Meteorology, Oceanography, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Water Resource Management
date published: 2019-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:57:21Z
provider: City University of New York - City College
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: City University of New York - City College