5th HEPEX webinar: The role of atmospheric rivers in flooding

Time: Thursday, June 27, 2013 10:30 am GMT Summer Time (London, GMT+01:00)

Speaker: David Lavers, University of Iowa

Watch the seminar again on Youtube!

Abstract: Damage from flooding in the winter and autumn seasons has been widespread in the United Kingdom and Western Europe over recent decades. In this seminar the connection between atmospheric rivers (ARs) and the largest winter floods in a range of British basins will be discussed from a hydrological and atmospheric stand-point. Firstly, an analysis of the hydrological time series is used to evaluate atmospheric fields before the largest floods to show the AR-flood link. Secondly, an algorithm is introduced that screens for ARs in climate model output; this is followed by showing the strong connection between the identified ARs and British winter floods. Future changes to ARs under climate change will also be considered.

About the speaker:
David has a BSc (Meteorology) from the University of Reading UK, an MSc (Applied Meteorology) from the University of Birmingham UK and a PhD from the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology Wallingford / University of Birmingham UK. He has worked on seasonal climate prediction at Princeton University and has also been a weather forecaster in the Middle East. He recently completed a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Reading on using hydrologically-relevant processes for the assessment of climate model output. He is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Iowa working in the broad area of hydrometeorology.

2 comments

  1. Fredrik Wetterhall

    June 27, 2013 at 14:49

    David, thank you for an excellent talk. For those of you who could not attend the meeting, here is a recording with davids talk and slides:
    https://ecmwf.webex.com/ecmwf/lsr.php?AT=pb&SP=EC&rID=3810392&rKey=5F5F4C56982C71B7

    EditReply
  2. Florian Pappenberger

    June 27, 2013 at 20:49

    I really liked the talk – thanks David!

    EditReply

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