Assessment of future flood intensification in Central Vietnam using a super-high-resolution climate model output

Abstract

This paper presents an assessment of the changes in future floods. The ranked area-average heavy daily rainfall amounts simulated by a super-high-resolution (20 km mesh) global climate model output are corrected with consideration of the effects of the topography on heavy rainfall patterns and used as a basis to model design storm hyetographs. The rainfall data are then used as the input for a nearly calibration-free parameter rainfall–runoff model to simulate floods in the future climate (2075–2099) at the Upper Thu Bon River basin in Central Vietnam. The results show that although the future mean annual rainfall will not be considerably different compared to the present-day climate (1979–2003), extreme rainfall is projected to increase vigorously, leading to a similar order of intensification of future floods. It is very likely that the flood peak with a 25-year recurrence will increase approximately 42% relative to the present-day climate. The occurrence of floods with a 10-year recurrence may exceed those with a 25-year recurrence in the present-day climate. The projection results also exhibit insignificant uncertainties caused by an artificial neural network-based bias correction model. Additionally, the presented bias correction model shows advantages over a simple climatology scaling method.