Abstract
Floods are a major contributor to natural disasters in Sumatra. However, atmospheric conditions leading to floods are not well understood due, among other factors, to the lack of a complete record of floods. Here, the 5 year flood record for Sumatra derived from governmental reports, as well as from crowd-sourcing data, based on Twitter messages and local newspapers’ reports, is created and used to analyze atmospheric phenomena responsible for floods. It is shown, that for the majority of analyzed floods, convectively coupled Kelvin waves, large scale precipitation systems propagating at ∼12 m/s along the equator, play the critical role. While seasonal and intraseasonal variability can also create conditions favorable for flooding, the enhanced precipitation related to Kelvin waves was found in over 90% of flood events. In 30% of these events precipitation anomalies were attributed to Kelvin waves only. These results indicate the potential for increased predictability of flood risk.
Highlights
Floods are a major contributor to natural disasters in Sumatra
Socialmedia based flood detection has been shown to be useful in Indonesia[34], where over 75% of active internet users are using Twitter, a social media platform
In this study we establish the use of three independent datasets; two data bases that we developed for analyzing flood events based on Twitter messages and articles in local newspapers, and a third based on the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management (BNPB) data
Summary
Floods are a major contributor to natural disasters in Sumatra. atmospheric conditions leading to floods are not well understood due, among other factors, to the lack of a complete record of floods. The 5 year flood record for Sumatra derived from governmental reports, as well as from crowd-sourcing data, based on Twitter messages and local newspapers’ reports, is created and used to analyze atmospheric phenomena responsible for floods. It is shown, that for the majority of analyzed floods, convectively coupled Kelvin waves, large scale precipitation systems propagating at ∼12 m/s along the equator, play the critical role. In 30% of these events precipitation anomalies were attributed to Kelvin waves only These results indicate the potential for increased predictability of flood risk. While earthquakes and tsunamis are the most deadly Indonesian disasters, floods affected the lives of almost 14 million of Indonesian citizens between 1974 and 201310, with a fatality rate from hydrological events exceeding 25 persons per 1M population[1]
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