Climate change and river flooding: Part 2 sensitivity characterisation for british catchments and example vulnerability assessments

This paper is the second of a series describing a scenario-neutral methodology to assess the sensitivity and vulnerability of British catchments to changes in flooding due to climate change. In paper one, nine flood sensitivity types were identified from response surfaces generated for 154 catchment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Climatic change 2013-08, Vol.119 (3-4), p.949-964
Main Authors: Prudhomme, Christel, Kay, Alison L., Crooks, Sue, Reynard, Nick
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Archives & records
Atmospheric Sciences
British
Catchments
Climate change
Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change
Decision trees
Discriminant analysis
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Engineering and environment geology. Geothermics
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Floods
Freshwater
Mathematical models
Meteorology
Natural hazards: prediction, damages, etc
Partitioning
Permeability
Precipitation
Response surfaces
Rivers
Sensitivity analysis
Stream flow
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Summary:This paper is the second of a series describing a scenario-neutral methodology to assess the sensitivity and vulnerability of British catchments to changes in flooding due to climate change. In paper one, nine flood sensitivity types were identified from response surfaces generated for 154 catchments. The response surfaces describe changes in 20-year return period flood peaks (RP20) in response to a large set of changes in precipitation, temperature and potential evapotranspiration. In this paper, a recursive partitioning algorithm is used to link families of sensitivity types to catchment properties, via a decision tree. The tree shows 85 % success characterising the four sensitivity families, using five properties and nine paths. Catchment annual average rainfall is the primary partitioning factor, with drier catchments having a more variable response to climate (precipitation) change than wetter catchments and higher catchment losses and permeability being aggravating factors. The full sensitivity-exposure-vulnerability methodology is illustrated for two catchments: sensitivity is estimated by using the decision tree to identify the sensitivity family (and its associated average response surface); exposure is defined from a set of climate model projections and combined with the response surface to estimate the resulting impacts (changes in RP20); vulnerability under a range of adaptive capacity thresholds is estimated from the set of impacts. Even though they are geographically close, the two catchments show differing vulnerability to climate change, due to their differing properties. This demonstrates that generalised response surfaces characterised by catchment properties are useful screening tools to quantify the vulnerability of catchments to climate change without the need to undertake a full climate change impact study.
ISSN:0165-0009
1573-1480
DOI:10.1007/s10584-013-0726-3