Reconstruction of long-term hydrologic change and typhoon-induced flood events over the entire island of Taiwan

Abstract

Study regionThe island of Taiwan. Study focusThis study presents long-term and high-resolution modeling of flood occurrence, interdecadal patterns of river-floodplain dynamics, and analysis of flooding during two typhoon events—Nari and Morakot over Taiwan. The modeling system combines a hydrological model (HiGW-MAT) and a river hydrodynamics model (CaMa-Flood), simulating hydrologic-hydrodynamic processes at ∼ 5 km resolution with flood occurrences downscaled to ∼ 90 m. New hydrological insights for the regionAs the first investigation to conduct spatially comprehensive and temporally continuous modeling in Taiwan, this study presents important advances on the application of large-scale hydrological-hydrodynamic models in settings like that of Taiwan with important implications on flood prediction under climate change. The assessment of interdecadal changes in streamflow indicates no consistent trends over the past four decades; however, the variabilities in monthly-scale streamflow are significant and regionally diverse across Taiwan. Decadal changes in flood occurrence are also minimal at the island-scale, but the changes vary substantially across different regions and exhibit an increased variability over time. Furthermore, the simulated flood patterns in response to Typhoons Nari and Morakot suggest that the modeling framework can be used to reproduce the spatial dynamics and temporal progression of flooding under extreme events in relatively small regions like Taiwan.