Changes in rainfall and flooding across Australia
Date: 24 June 2022, FridayTime: 4pm AEDT
Speaker: Dr Conrad Wasko (University of Melbourne)
Abstract: As the climate warms extreme rainfall should increase as dictated by the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship. Knowing that a thermodynamic relationship exists linking rainfall and temperature it could be expected that historical sensitivities of rainfall and temperature would be useful in informing us how climate change will affect rainfall. But in practice the estimation sensitivities are fraught due to artefacts that arise in their calculation. Despite this, there is evidence to suggest they may be helpful in informing potential changes in rainfall and flooding in a warmer world.
As changes in rainfall extremes are expected to increase flooding it is critical to consider changes in flooding for infrastructure design. The second part of this talk focusses on the application of circular statistics to understanding changes in flood timing across Australia. There is a shift to earlier flooding in the tropics, consistent with increases in mean rainfall in the tropics wetting soils earlier in the flood season. In the extra-tropics it appears flood timing is shifting to later in the flood season due to reductions in rainfall meaning the soil takes longer to saturate and before flooding.
Bio: Conrad Wasko is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Conrad has over ten years’ experience in both consulting and research. His research has won him numerous awards including the MSSANZ Early Career Research Excellence Award, the Victoria Fellowship, and the Lorenz G. Straub award for best PhD thesis globally in water engineering. He has contributed to Australia’s national guidelines on flood estimation and his current research focuses on understanding the effects of climate change on hydrology and specifically extreme events.
Link: https://unsw.zoom.us/j/82299381917?pwd=ZDRLeVZveFdDSHlOSGkxYWRMK0JXZz09
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