Cyclone Flooding & Windspeed

Cyclone-induced hazards are rising with climate change

Ravela et al. show that cyclone-induced hazards to Bangladesh’s low-lying and densely populated coastal regions, already vulnerable to them in the present climate, are rising with climate change. This includes wind, rainfall, and compound flooding. For example, the frequency of coastal flooding from destructive cyclones like Bhola and Gorky could significantly increase by ten and twenty times, respectively. 

Assessing cyclone-induced risks relies on their patented, unique, and widely cited approach, which uses physics to model hurricanes in various climate scenarios that climate models cannot explicitly resolve. These novel downscaling approaches are consistent with observations, but rely on physics to estimate risk given the very limited historical cyclone observation data.

Using this approach, Ravela et al. estimate pointwise wind exceedance probability charts for specific sites in present climate and various climate scenarios using a large ensemble of climate models to quantify confidence/uncertainty. The changes in exceedance probabilities are key to local sustainable decision making for wind, rain, flood.