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Invited perspectives: safeguarding the usability and credibility of flood hazard and risk assessments

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
DOI 10.5194/nhess-24-4015-2024
26 November 2024

Flood risk assessments help us decide how to reduce the risk of flooding. Since these assessments are based on probabilities, it is hard to check their accuracy by comparing them to past data. We suggest a new way to validate these assessments, making sure they are practical for real-life decisions. This approach looks at both the technical details and the real-world situations where decisions are made. We demonstrate its practicality by applying it to flood emergency planning.

X-BASE: the first terrestrial carbon and water flux products from an extended data-driven scaling framework, FLUXCOM-X

The movement of water, carbon, and energy from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere, or flux, is an important process to understand because it impacts our lives. Here, we outline a method called FLUXCOM-X to estimate global water and CO2 fluxes based on direct measurements from sites around the world. We go on to demonstrate how these new estimates of net CO2 uptake/loss, gross CO2 uptake, total water evaporation, and transpiration from plants compare to previous and independent estimates.

Twenty-first century global glacier evolution under CMIP6 scenarios and the role of glacier-specific observations

Glaciers are major contributors to sea-level rise and act as key water resources. Here, we model the global evolution of glaciers under the latest generation of climate scenarios. We show that the type of observations used for model calibration can strongly affect the projections at the local scale. Our newly projected 21st century global mass loss is higher than the current community estimate as reported in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

How to measure the efficiency of bioenergy crops compared to forestation

Using a state-of-the-art land model, we find that bioenergy plants can store carbon more efficiently than forests over long periods in the soil, in geological reservoirs, or by substituting fossil-fuel-based energy. Planting forests is more suitable for reaching climate targets by 2050. The carbon removal potential depends also on local environmental conditions. These considerations have important implications for climate policy, spatial planning, nature conservation, and agriculture.

An overview of outdoor low-cost gas-phase air quality sensor deployments: current efforts, trends, and limitations

We reviewed 60 sensor networks and 17 related efforts (sensor review papers and data accessibility projects) to better understand the landscape of stationary low-cost gas-phase sensor networks deployed in outdoor environments worldwide. Gaps in monitoring efforts include the availability of gas-phase measurements compared to particulate matter (PM) and geographic coverage gaps (the Global South, rural areas). We conclude with a summary of cross-network unification and quality control efforts.

Testing floc settling velocity models in rivers and freshwater wetlands

Fine sediment grains in freshwater can cohere into faster-settling particles called flocs, but floc settling velocity theory has not been fully validated. Combining three data sources in novel ways in the Wax Lake Delta, we verified a semi-empirical model relying on turbulence and geochemical factors. For a physics-based model, we showed that the representative grain diameter within flocs relies on floc structure and that heterogeneous flow paths inside flocs increase floc settling velocity.

Tropospheric links to uncertainty in stratospheric subseasonal predictions

Strong variations in the strength of the stratospheric polar vortex can profoundly affect surface weather extremes; therefore, accurately predicting the stratosphere can improve surface weather forecasts. The research reveals how uncertainty in the stratosphere is linked to the troposphere. The findings suggest that refining models to better represent the identified sources and impact regions in the troposphere is likely to improve the prediction of the stratosphere and its surface impacts.

A three-stage model pipeline predicting regional avalanche danger in Switzerland (RAvaFcast v1.0.0): a decision-support tool for operational avalanche forecasting

By harnessing AI models, this work enables processing large amounts of data, including weather conditions, snowpack characteristics, and historical avalanche data, to predict human-like avalanche forecasts in Switzerland. Our proposed model can significantly assist avalanche forecasters in their decision-making process, thereby facilitating more efficient and accurate predictions crucial for ensuring safety in Switzerland’s avalanche-prone regions.

Exploring climate stabilisation at different global warming levels in ACCESS-ESM-1.5

Governments are targeting net-zero emissions later this century with the aim of limiting global warming in line with the Paris Agreement. However, few studies explore the long-term consequences of reaching net-zero emissions and the effects of a delay in reaching net-zero. We use the Australian Earth system model to examine climate evolution under net-zero emissions. We find substantial changes which differ regionally, including continued Southern Ocean warming and Antarctic sea ice reduction.

Air quality modeling intercomparison and multiscale ensemble chain for Latin America

Latin America (LAC) has some of the most populated urban areas in the world, with high levels of air pollution. Air quality management in LAC has been traditionally focused on surveillance and building emission inventories. This study performed the first intercomparison and model evaluation in LAC, with interesting and insightful findings for the region. A multiscale modeling ensemble chain was assembled as a first step towards an air quality forecasting system.

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