Articles | Volume 8, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-1071-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-1071-2017
Research article
 | 
01 Dec 2017
Research article |  | 01 Dec 2017

Classification of mechanisms, climatic context, areal scaling, and synchronization of floods: the hydroclimatology of floods in the Upper Paraná River basin, Brazil

Carlos H. R. Lima, Amir AghaKouchak, and Upmanu Lall

Abstract. Floods are the main natural disaster in Brazil, causing substantial economic damage and loss of life. Studies suggest that some extreme floods result from a causal climate chain. Exceptional rain and floods are determined by large-scale anomalies and persistent patterns in the atmospheric and oceanic circulations, which influence the magnitude, extent, and duration of these extremes. Moreover, floods can result from different generating mechanisms. These factors contradict the assumptions of homogeneity, and often stationarity, in flood frequency analysis. Here we outline a methodological framework based on clustering using self-organizing maps (SOMs) that allows the linkage of large-scale processes to local-scale observations. The methodology is applied to flood data from several sites in the flood-prone Upper Paraná River basin (UPRB) in southern Brazil. The SOM clustering approach is employed to classify the 6-day rainfall field over the UPRB into four categories, which are then used to classify floods into four types based on the spatiotemporal dynamics of the rainfall field prior to the observed flood events. An analysis of the vertically integrated moisture fluxes, vorticity, and high-level atmospheric circulation revealed that these four clusters are related to known tropical and extratropical processes, including the South American low-level jet (SALLJ); extratropical cyclones; and the South Atlantic Convergence Zone (SACZ). Persistent anomalies in the sea surface temperature fields in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are also found to be associated with these processes. Floods associated with each cluster present different patterns in terms of frequency, magnitude, spatial variability, scaling, and synchronization of events across the sites and subbasins. These insights suggest new directions for flood risk assessment, forecasting, and management.

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Short summary
Floods are the main natural disaster in Brazil, causing substantial economic damage and loss of life. Here we seek to better understand the flood-generating mechanisms in the flood-prone Paraná River basin, including large-scale patterns of the ocean and atmospheric circulation. This study provides new insights for understanding causes of floods in the region and around the world and is a step forward to improve flood risk management, statistical assessments, and short-term flood forecasts.
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