Increasing Flood Frequencies Under Warming in the West-Central Himalayas

Swarnkar, S and Mujumdar, P (2023) Increasing Flood Frequencies Under Warming in the West-Central Himalayas. In: Water Resources Research, 59 (2).

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Abstract

The west-central Himalayan River basins face significant damage caused by extreme floods annually. We selected the upper Ganga basin (UGB), the west-central Himalayan basin, to demonstrate how maximum cumulative storm and total rainfall received during monsoon control the extreme flow variability. In addition, the downscaled CMIP6 data sets were used for projections of extremes. The results suggest that historically Alaknanda basin receives a relatively higher magnitude of monsoon and storm rainfall than the other regions in the UGB, which manifested into significant extreme flow variability at the Alaknanda outlet. The extreme flows at the UGB outlet are projected to be more frequent under warming scenarios. The nonstationary flood frequency magnitudes are higher than those obtained from the stationary frequency method, implying a need for a review of return periods used in the designs of flood control structures in the region. © 2023. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Water Resources Research
Publisher:	John Wiley and Sons Inc
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to John Wiley and Sons Inc.
Keywords:	Atmospheric thermodynamics; Climate change; Flood control; Rain; Storms, Extreme flows; Flood frequency; Flow variability; Ganga basin; Ganga river; Himalayan rivers; Himalayas; Non-stationarities; River basins; Storm rainfall, Floods, climate change; flood control; flood damage; flood frequency; global warming; monsoon; rainfall; storm surge, Ganges River; Himalayas
Department/Centre:	Division of Interdisciplinary Sciences > Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research
Date Deposited:	15 Mar 2023 06:02
Last Modified:	15 Mar 2023 06:02
URI:	https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/80982

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