![]() That means it has a 1-1.1% chance of occurring in a given year, or 26-28% chance in 30 years. This scenario was thought to have a recurrence interval of once every 90-100 years. The ARkHist scenario involved storms that produced slightly less precipitation than the Great Flood of 1861-62 but slightly more than the wettest winters of the past 100 years. This would greatly increase flash flood and landslide/debris flow risk – especially since climate change is bringing California a major increase in large and intense wildfires, making denuded slopes more vulnerable to flooding. The modeled storms not only brought massive precipitation accumulations – they also produced very high precipitation intensities (that is, very heavy precipitation during a single hour or day). (For readers familiar with weather models, it was WRF with grid boxes 3 km on a side.) They also developed a more extreme case in a much warmer world, called ARkFuture.īoth scenarios featured a weeks-long parade of atmospheric river storms during the winter months. A high-resolution weather model was then run, using the climate model as input, in order to produce detailed “synthetic weather forecasts” for California. The new study used climate modeling to develop a plausible megastorm in the present-day climate (1995-2005), which they called ARkHist. The ARkStorm 2.0 scenarioĪ 2011 government study introduced the “ARkStorm” scenario, finding that a megaflood in California could swamp the state’s Central Valley and cause more than $1 trillion in damage.Ī 2022 study by Xinging Huang and Daniel Swain updates that work in a scenario called “ARkStorm 2.0,” using data and computer modeling advances not available in 2011. Here, in Part Three, we’ll look at the increasing future threat of a California megaflood in a warming climate. ![]() Part Two looked at how California is preparing its dams for future great floods. Part One examined the results of a 2011 study introducing the potential impacts of a scenario, known as “ARkStorm,” which would be a repeat of California’s Great Flood of 1861-62 - though the study did not take climate change into account. This is the third part of a three-part series on California’s vulnerability to a megaflood. The parade of West Coast storms over the last ten days. ![]()
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