MAY 6, 2011
HMT results to be highlighted at upcoming National Hydrologic Warning Council Conference
Flash floods, extreme weather events and climate change are on the agenda
for more than 300 leading scientists and engineers coming to San Diego for
the National Hydrologic Warning Council (NHWC) conference May 9-12, 2011.
Keynote speakers include:
- Mary M. Glackin, Undersecretary for Operations, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who will address forecasts and warnings in the information age;
- Michael Gabaldon, Director of Technical Services, US Bureau of Reclamation, who will discuss the Bureau's latest activities in flood management; and
- Christopher Dunn, Director, Hydrologic Engineering Center, US Army Corps of Engineers, presents a vision for a nationwide water management system and discusses its importance.
Two major results from HMT will be highlighted at this conference:
- The Luncheon presentation on May 12 will be an overview of the
ARkStorm Emergency Preparedness Scenario for California – "what happens
in California when the next 'Big One' happens," given by Dr. Martin
Ralph, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. When the USGS'
"Multihazards" team considered what to do as a follow-on exercise to
their highly successful Southern California Shakeout earthquake
project, they chose to explore vulnerabilities to a major winter storm.
Based heavily on findings from HMT-West about the importance of
atmospheric rivers for flooding in the region, the ARkStorm
winter-storm scenario began taking shape and has greatly enhanced
awareness of flood and storm risks in California. In 2010 the USGS
released the ARkStorm, a hypothetical, though scientifically plausible,
California storm scenario. The ARkStorm scenario showed that a series
of severe California winter storm could realistically flood thousands
of square miles of urban and agricultural land, result in thousands of
landslides, disrupt lifelines throughout the state for days or weeks,
and cost on the order of $725 billion. This amount is more than three
times the costs expected from the magnitude 7.8 ShakeOut scenario
earthquake that has roughly the same probability of occurring in any
given year as an ARkStorm-like storm sequence. The $725 billion figure
comprises approximately $400 billion in immediate property damages and
$325 billion in recovery-stage business-interruption losses. An event
like the ARkStorm could require the evacuation of as many as 1,500,000
people. Because the flood depths in some areas could realistically be
on the order of 10-20 ft, without effective evacuation there could be
substantial loss of life. For more information see
http://urbanearth.gps.caltech.edu/winter-storm/.
- Dr. Michael Dettinger, of the US Geological Survey and Scripps
Institution of Oceanography (SIO), will consider projected changes in
the probabilities of occurrence of atmospheric-river storms and floods,
and will present highlights of a major new network of
hydrometeorological observations being installed in California as part
of a 5-year project between the California Department of Water
Resources, ESRL's Physical Sciences Division and SIO. The network
is designed to monitor key conditions associated with extreme
precipitation and flood events and draws heavily upon HMT-West results
and methods. Observations in the new State-scale network include
continuous snow levels aloft, water vapor aloft (vertically
integrated), soil moisture, and horizontal water vapor transport aloft.
These data, along with specialized model products, are provided online
to reservoir managers, the public and to NWS forecast offices. This
network of sensors at over 90 sites across the state will provide
modern monitoring of atmospheric rivers and related conditions that
represent the primary causes of flooding in this region.
For more information, see the NHWC
press release about the conference.
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Contacts: Marty Ralph (marty.ralph@noaa.gov), Mike Dettinger (mddettin@usgs.gov)