Associated Press - Yellowstone floods reveal forecasting flaws in warming world
Traditional flood forecasting techniques based on long-term weather patterns are failing as climate change pushes us further from historical norms. These shortcomings were highlighted in the devastating floods that hit the Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas in June, 2022.
Knowing that our current flood forecasting methods are inadequate of course begs the question: how can we generate better flood forecasts for an uncertain future? We can’t simply rely on rainfall-runoff curves that do not account for the increasingly frequent extreme weather events that climate change is already causing.
The answer is to build sophisticated integrated hydrologic simulations that fully account for both groundwater and surface water dynamics in a physics-focused model. These models provide the best possible method of running scenario analyses, and allow you to model rainfall runoff in your catchment based on worst-case scenarios presented by climate change. This is exactly what Canada1Water aims to provide to Canadians, providing communities across the country with a better understanding of how waterways will respond to future weather events. HydroGeoSphere (the simulation platform at the heart of Canada1Water) makes large-scale fully-integrated hydrologic modelling possible, and allows us to quantify flood risk in an uncertain future.
Click here to read the article in the Associated Press.
“Hydrologic models used to predict flooding are based on long-term, historical records. But they do not reflect changes to the climate that emerged over the past decade. Those models are going to be inadequate to deal with a new climate,”
“Those rivers had never reached those levels. We literally were flying blind not even knowing what the impacts would be.”
“As a cleanup expected to last months grinds on, climate experts and meteorologists say the gap between the destruction and what was forecast underscores a troublesome aspect of climate change: Models used to predict storm impacts do not always keep up with increasingly devastating rainstorms, hurricanes, heat waves and other events.”