A global assessment of change in flood volume with surface air temperature

Abstract

Climate change is expected to have a significant impact on water security, with higher temperatures causing both enhanced droughts and flood extremes. Here, using global flow data from non-urban catchments, we investigate the sensitivity of flood volume to changes in concurrent surface air temperature. We find most of the world shows decreases in flood volumes with increasing temperature. To understand why this correlation exists, we assess the sensitivity of the above result to mean daily temperatures (climate region), catchment size, and severity of the flood event. Our results indicate that most of the world shows decreases in flood volume with rising temperature for frequent events (50th..