Assessing 21st Century Changes in Flood Risk Related to Climate Change Along the Upper Mississippi River, USA.
- Status: Funded by the National Commission on Energy Policy
- Duration: August 2009 to August 2011
- PI: Keith Cherkauer, Purdue University
- Co-PIs: Katherine Hayhoe, Texas Tech; Jonathan Remo, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Project Summary:
Project developments
We have completed rescaling observed streamflow for the Mississippi River at Grafton, IL and the Missouri River as Hermann, MO for several of the future climate models and scenaios required for this analysis. Estimates of 100 year flood flow rates and uncertainty associated with those estimates will be completed in the next few weeks.
This project will use down-scalled and bias-corrected projections of air temperature and precipitation with the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) large-scale hydrology model to produce streamflow projections for the Mississippi River. Streamflow projections will then be used to predict changes in flood risk for a 300 mile long stretch of the main stem upper Mississippi River. This information will in turn be fed to an economic assessment tool that will estimate potential flood damage based on the projected streamflow.