ArkStorm 2.0

Extracted Attributes

• Type

  Hypothetical Megastorm Scenario

• Lead Agency

  United States Geological Survey (USGS)

• Climate Model

  RCP 8.5 (High-warming emissions scenario)

• Lead Researchers

  Daniel Swain (UCLA) and Xingying Huang

• Primary Location

  California, United States

• Scenario Duration

  30 days of precipitation

• Probability Change

  Increased from 1-in-100 year event to 1-in-50 year event due to climate change

• Meteorological Driver

  Atmospheric River

• Estimated Economic Loss

  725 billion USD (based on 1.0 baseline)

Timeline

• Start of the historical Great Flood of 1862, which serves as the real-world basis for the ARkStorm scenarios. (Source: Wikipedia)

  1861-12-24

• The USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) publishes the original ARkStorm 1.0 scenario. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2010-01-01

• The ARkStorm 2.0 study, incorporating climate change data, is published in Science Advances. (Source: PreventionWeb.net)

  2022-08-01

• Beginning of the timeframe for the hypothetical 'future climate' scenario modeled in ARkStorm 2.0. (Source: HEC-HMS Documentation)

  2071-01-01

ARkStorm

The ARkStorm (for Atmospheric River 1,000) is a hypothetical megastorm, whose proposal is based on repeated historical occurrences of atmospheric rivers and other major rain events first developed and published by the Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 2010. An updated model was published as ARkStorm 2.0 in 2022.

Web Search Results

• Using the ARkStorm 2.0 Meteorology within HEC-HMS

  Building upon the ARkStorm 1.0 effort, an updated version of the ARkStorm scenario was created and is hereafter referred to as "ARkStorm 2.0" (Huang and Swain, 2022). The ARkStorm 2.0 events were designed using two separate scenarios: 1) one drawn from the recent historical climate (circa 1996–2005; hereafter referred to as “ARkHist”) and 2) another from a hypothetical warmer future climate (2071–2080 in the “high warming” Relative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 emissions scenario; hereafter [...] The ARkStorm 2.0 meteorology is distributed within NetCDF files and can be efficiently imported for use within HEC-HMS (once reformatted; see below). Detailed steps to import and format NetCDF data as well as configure the requisite modeling elements within HEC-HMS is detailed within several tutorials located here: Working with Gridded Boundary Condition Data. [...] ### ARkStorm 2.0

• What You Didn't Hear about California's Coming Megaflood

  Recently in the news, we saw the release of the first phase of ARkStorm 2.0, a big modeling effort to look at what happens if a series of atmospheric rivers hits California, rains down on the Sierra Nevada, and then floods this great Central Valley, making it into another inland sea like it once was. [...] However, more frequent and intense megastorms are coming, according to a recent study which takes climate change into account. The climate model known as “ARkStorm 2.0” predicts a series of storm events likely to cause much greater damage, disruption, and economic losses than previous major floods as global temperatures continue to climb. [...] We know now that this is being driven by our warming atmosphere. As our as our planet warms, our atmosphere is able to hold more moisture, increasing the intensity of rain events. So, the ARkStorm modeling takes a look at something that was at 100 to 200 year kind of flood event in California, and they’re suggesting that maybe it’ll be a 1 in 50 year event in the near future because of what’s happening in our atmosphere. What kind of damage can a megaflood cause?

• ARkStorm 2.0: Climate change is increasing the risk of a California ...

  entire Water Year in just 30 days! [...] ### ARkStorm 2.0 megastorm scenarios: Historic, and then some [...] The answer, to the best of our current knowledge, is…both.

• USA: California flooding from the arkstorm - PreventionWeb.net

  The ARkStorm 2.0 dataset is the primary result of a study(opens in a new window) published August 2022 in Science Advances. The study received widespread attention, including coverage(opens in a new window) by the New York Times. “The key findings are twofold. One is, we assess this as a scenario and study what it actually looks like. Yes, clearly, it rains a lot. But how much is a lot, how quickly, and which areas are hit hardest,” Swain said. [...] But one thing that ARkStorm 1.0 didn’t account for was climate change, which scientists predict increases atmospheric water vapor and therefore could increase the intensity of megastorms. ## Climate Makes ARkStorm 2.0 Enter ARkStorm 2.0 — an update to ARkStorm 1.0 that takes climate change into account by embedding a high-resolution weather model inside of a climate model, using the climate model conditions as the boundary conditions. [...] “The ARkStorm 2.0 dataset is curated from an impacts-based perspective,” said climate scientist Daniel Swain of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; Swain also is with the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes; and is a California Climate Fellow with The Nature Conservancy.

• ARkStorm - Wikipedia

  Wikipedia # ARkStorm The ARkStorm (for Atmospheric River 1,000) is a hypothetical megastorm, whose proposal is based on repeated historical occurrences of atmospheric rivers and other major rain events first developed and published by the Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 2010. An updated model was published as ARkStorm 2.0 in 2022. ## Contents ## ARkStorm 1.0 (2010 Study) [...] The conditions built into the scenario are "two super-strong atmospheric rivers, just four days apart, one in Northern California and one in Southern California, and one of them stalled for an extra day". The ARkStorm 1.0 scenario would have the following effects: ## ARkStorm 2.0 (2022 update) [...] The ARkStorm 1.0 scenario describes an extreme storm that devastates much of California, causing up to $725 billion in losses (mostly due to flooding and erosion), and affecting a quarter of California's homes. The scenario projects impacts of a storm that would be significantly less intense (25 days of rain) than the California storms that occurred between December 1861 and January 1862 (43 days). That event dumped nearly 10 feet (3.0 m) of rain in parts of California.