Tracking an atmospheric river in a warmer climate: from water vapor to economic impacts

Dominguez, Francina; Dall'erba, Sandy; Huang, Shuyi; Avelino, Andre; Mehran, Ali; Hu, Huancui; Schmidt, Arthur; Schick, Lawrence; Lettenmaier, Dennis

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-249-2018

Articles | Volume 9, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-249-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The 8th EGU Leonardo Conference: From evaporation to precipitation:...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-249-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 9, issue 1

Research article

|

16 Mar 2018

Research article |

| 16 Mar 2018

Tracking an atmospheric river in a warmer climate: from water vapor to economic impacts

Francina Dominguez, Sandy Dall'erba, Shuyi Huang, Andre Avelino, Ali Mehran, Huancui Hu, Arthur Schmidt, Lawrence Schick, and Dennis Lettenmaier

Download

Final revised paper (published on 16 Mar 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 26 Jun 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of "Tracking an Atmospheric River in a Warmer Climate: from Water Vapor to Economic Impacts"', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 Jul 2017
- AC1: 'Responses to Reviewer 1', Francina Domínguez, 13 Sep 2017
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Aug 2017
- AC2: 'Responses to Reviewer 2', Francina Domínguez, 13 Sep 2017

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Oct 2017) by Gerrit Lohmann

AR by Francina Domínguez on behalf of the Authors (24 Oct 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Nov 2017) by Gerrit Lohmann

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (01 Dec 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (11 Jan 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have convincingly addressed the comments from the first review round.

Regarding mainly my field of expertise, the economic part, the authors provide additional figures that greatly improve the understandability of the economic results.
A more detailed explanation and interpretation of the HAZUS model is added. Although the use of such an "external" model still has (and always will have) some sort of "black box"-character, I agree that the use of the HAZUS model seems appropriate in the present case. The authors now emphasize that the model is not really calibrated and that overall damages estimates were used as reference.
The (newly) presented underlying economic assumptions (industries at full a capacity prior to the event, fixed expenditure structure, potential positive impacts, homogeneous productivity per square foot, ...) are reasonable and indeed standard in similar economic models.
The calculation of the loss-probability curves and the corresponding expected annual losses in Figure 13 c) constitutes the major improvement regarding the presentation of the economic results.
Unfortunately, a simulation does not seem to exist for the 1-in-100 years event under the +15% streamflow scenario. However, one can reasonably assume that the losses would be at least as high as for the present 1-in-100 years event (probably much higher).
Thus, if the expected losses are really calculated as the area under the curves as marked in the figure, the expected losses for the future scenario are too low.
Furthermore, by looking at the figure, it seems that the marked area under the blue curve is actually larger than the one under the red curve (because of the missing 1-in-100 years event).
Taking the unavailability of results for the 1-in-100 years event under the +15% streamflow scenario as given, I would suggest using the the losses from the present 1-in-100 years event to calculate a lower bound for the corresponding future event, which would lead to a more realistic (and higher) expected value than the presented value (1.2 million $).

Subsequently, the authors have done a good job in revising the paper. I would leave the remaining point regarding the expected losses (Figure 13c) to the authors to deal with in a potential editorial process and I would not demand another resubmission for this small point.
In other words, I think the paper should be "accepted subject to (very) minor revisions"

Hide

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (13 Jan 2018) by Gerrit Lohmann

AR by Francina Domínguez on behalf of the Authors (26 Jan 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) account for most of the extreme flooding events on the northwestern coast of the US. In a warmer climate, ARs in this region are projected to become more frequent and intense. We present an integrated modeling system to quantify atmospheric–hydrologic–hydraulic and economic impacts of an AR event in western Washington. Our integrated modeling tool provides communities in the region with a range of possible future physical and economic impacts associated with AR flooding.