Should seasonal rainfall forecasts be used for flood preparedness?

Coughlan de Perez, Erin; Stephens, Elisabeth; Bischiniotis, Konstantinos; van Aalst, Maarten; van den Hurk, Bart; Mason, Simon; Nissan, Hannah; Pappenberger, Florian

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4517-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4517-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Sub-seasonal to seasonal hydrological forecasting

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4517-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 9

Research article

|

11 Sep 2017

Research article |

| 11 Sep 2017

Should seasonal rainfall forecasts be used for flood preparedness?

Erin Coughlan de Perez, Elisabeth Stephens, Konstantinos Bischiniotis, Maarten van Aalst, Bart van den Hurk, Simon Mason, Hannah Nissan, and Florian Pappenberger

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Sep 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Feb 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review for hess-2017-40', Anonymous Referee #1, 13 Apr 2017
- RC2: 'Comment on review', Anonymous Referee #1, 13 Apr 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1', Erin Coughlan de Perez, 29 May 2017
RC3: 'Referee comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 26 Apr 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2', Erin Coughlan de Perez, 29 May 2017
EC1: 'Please reply to reviewer comments', Q.J. Wang, 08 May 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (02 Jun 2017) by Q.J. Wang

AR by Erin Coughlan de Perez on behalf of the Authors (14 Jul 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (20 Jul 2017) by Q.J. Wang

AR by Erin Coughlan de Perez on behalf of the Authors (29 Jul 2017)

Short summary

Disaster managers would like to use seasonal forecasts to anticipate flooding months in advance. However, current seasonal forecasts give information on rainfall instead of flooding. Here, we find that the number of extreme events, rather than total rainfall, is most related to flooding in different regions of Africa. We recommend several forecast adjustments and research opportunities that would improve flood information at the seasonal timescale in different regions.