#floodrisk — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

💧🌏 Greg Cocks @[email protected] · 2026-08-07 · 04:46 UTC

Coastal Flooding At Predictable Hours
--
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75710-5 <-- shared paper
--
H/T @bruna Alves | Nature Communications | Editor
“When do coastal floods happen? ⏱️🌊
A new study [link above] shows that, in many tide-dominated coastal regions, flooding tends to occur at specific and recurring times of day. Rather than being completely random, flood events often cluster around predictable hours driven by local tidal patterns.
By analysing coastal flood observations from the UK and the US, [the authors] show[ed] that the timing of flood events can be highly structured, with some locations experiencing floods disproportionately during certain parts of the day.
This adds a temporal dimension to coastal flood risk. We often focus on how frequently floods occur, how severe they are, and where they happen. This study highlights that when they occur may also matter, particularly as rising sea levels increase the frequency of coastal flooding.
The findings provide a useful perspective for coastal adaptation, risk communication, and emergency planning…”
--
“Flooding is typically perceived as a sudden and unpredictable hazard. Here, [they] show that recurrent flooding can occur at highly predictable times in tidally dominated coastal systems. This predictability stems from phase-locking of tidal constituents and constituent pairs with the solar day, causing peak tides to recur at consistent local times set by regional tidal propagation. Using tide-gauge records from the United States and the United Kingdom, [they] quantif[ied] the intraday timing of coastal flood events and show strong clustering at specific hours, particularly where semidiurnal or mixed tides dominate. For example, floods in Boston cluster around noon and midnight, whereas in southern California they occur in the morning. Sites with stronger non-tidal variability show weaker clustering. This temporal predictability extends beyond nuisance flooding to larger consequential events involving inundation, road closures and infrastructural damage, highlighting opportunities for anticipatory risk communication, emergency planning and time-sensitive coastal adaptation…”
#coast #coastal #flood #flooding #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #time #statistics #geostatistics #tide #tidal #timing #temporal #floodrisk #risk #hazard #sealevel #sealevelrise #climatechange #emergency #planning #tideguage #UK #USA #innundation #infrastructure #transportation #riskcommunication

#coast #coastal #flood #flooding #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal

💧🌏 Greg Cocks @[email protected] · 2026-07-28 · 05:07 UTC

Busy Beavers - The Turbidity Signature Of Ecosystem Engineers At Work
--
https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.70661 <-- shared paper
--
H/T @alan Puttock
“Beavers are the quintessential ecosystem engineers. In slow-flowing streams, they create complex wetlands with ponds by building dams and canals that can positively impact biodiversity, hydrology and water quality. These activities can interchangeably capture or release sediment along the watercourse. To date this has not been quantified at the resolution of rainfall events or beaver activity. This study used 15-min frequency, sustained monitoring upstream and downstream of a newly establishing beaver wetland to measure episodic changes in water turbidity at an event resolution. Monitoring showed no significant differences between upstream and downstream turbidity over 160 days when the first pair of beavers, known not to be building dams or canals, were resident. Shortly after introduction of another beaver pair, however, dam building, burrows and canal excavations were quickly observed, resulting in the creation of a complex beaver wetland between 2021 and 2024. Monitoring over 375 days during this period showed significant differences. Downstream turbidity was significantly higher overall than upstream: 13.1 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU) compared to 4.2 NTU. Stochastic spikes in downstream turbidity during the study period not recorded upstream were associated with dam building and burrowing. Overall, there was no significant difference in turbidity loads, which was at least partially explained by a reduction in discharge downstream, particularly in higher flows, during the dam building period. This demonstrates a complex system with the trapping of influent sediment, the storing of water and the periodic release of beaver wetland sediment leading to net balance in loads. These results help provide context for other studies which have used temporally discrete sampling campaigns rather than continuous high-frequency monitoring. They provide a unique insight into the downstream impacts of a rapidly developing beaver wetland over its first three and a half years in a landscape that hasn't had beavers for over 400 years…"
#hydromorphic #water #hydrology #dam #beaverdam #waterquality #biodiversity #ecology #benefits #NatureBasedSolutions #Wetlands #Ecology #Biodiversity #EnvironmentalScience #Wildlife #Ecosystem #bioviversity #conservation #restoration #landscaperecovery #floodmanagement #FloodMitigation #flooding #energy #floodrisk #sustainability #wetlands #hydrography #dams #impoundment #deadwood #waterresources #landscapeengineer #benefits #vegetation #ecology #ecosystem #riversystemsstabilisation #naturalwaterregulation #resilience #valleysreborn #fisheries #invertebrates #extremeweather #floodflows #sediment #baseflow #drought #landmanagement #naturalsystems #landuse #monitoring #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal

#hydromorphic #water #hydrology #dam #beaverdam #waterquality

💧🌏 Greg Cocks @[email protected] · 2026-06-09 · 15:19 UTC

Study Highlights Growing Importance Of Multi-Day Storms In Future U.S. Flood Risk
--
https://news.okstate.edu/articles/engineering-architecture-technology/2026/study-highlights-growing-importance-of-multi-day-storms-in-future-u.s.-flood-risk <-- shared technical article
--
https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-5295/ae4f14 <-- shared paper
--
“Extreme rainfall is projected to intensify as the climate warms, yet whether the greatest increases will occur in multi-day or single-day events remains uncertain. This knowledge gap is particularly pressing given recent catastrophic floods triggered by multi-day rainfall events, prompting the question of whether multi-day events could, in fact, intensify more than their daily counterparts, and by how much. This study addresses this question using an ensemble of 34 downscaled Earth System Models under two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5), focusing on changes in extreme rainfall by the end of the century across ten regions of the contiguous United States. [Their] statistical framework evaluates model agreement, ensemble-mean changes, and the significance of these changes for both daily and multi-day rainfall extremes. Results show that extreme rainfall amounts are expected to increase for most regions and durations. The degree of intensification, however, depends strongly on event rarity and regional climate characteristics. Notably, in the U.S. western Gulf Coast region, very rare multi-day events (e.g., 500 year return period) are projected to intensify more than their daily counterparts, a phenomenon that could be explained by increased stalling of tropical cyclones, which can prolong heavy rainfall over multiple days. These results challenge the assumption that daily extremes dominate future risk and highlight the need to consider event duration when updating flood-hazard maps, design standards, and adaptation planning…”
#Flooding #FloodRisk #FloodInsurance #FloodAwareness #Explore #FloodPreparedness #FlashFlooding #ClimateResilience #climatechange #extremeweather #DisasterPreparedness #StormwaterManagement #FloodSafety #CommunityResilience #risk #hazard #model #modeling #floodrisk #multiday #rainfall #precipitation #storm #water #hydrology #hydrography #planning #policy #regulations #climatemodel #CONUS #USA #publicsafety #cost #economics #damage #loss #infrastructure #spatiotemporal #spatialanalysis #earthsystemmodels #forecasting #meteorology #designstandards #floodmapping #mitigation #flood