Research Projects

Climate change and human disturbances have significantly impacted the frequency, magnitude, and seasonality of floods worldwide. Warmer temperatures have increased the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere, leading to higher-magnitude storm events. Increased precipitation intensity and magnitude have exaggerated flash flood hazards. Land surface response changes due to human activity have amplified flood magnitudes and shortened upstream to downstream travel time. Alterations in moisture levels in the atmosphere and land surface response have directly amplified and altered the flood generation mechanism. Compounding effects may produce extremely hazardous flood conditions due to the co-occurrences of multiple processes simultaneously and interdependence between multiple flood generation mechanisms. This research project focuses on flood extremes due to the compounding effect of multiple processes' interaction in the Narmada River basin. Work packages 1 and 2 will use flood characterization concepts to assess how historically flood behaviors have changed. The at-site measured daily water discharge dataset will be used to analyze flood characteristics. Multivariate extreme value distribution will be applied to assess interdependencies between multiday rainfall, temperature, and soil moisture conditions. Flood frequencies will be analyzed using joint probability distribution based on copula theory. The results will enhance our understanding of flood generation mechanisms, their compounding effects, and flood magnitudes at different frequencies across the flood-prone Narmada River basin.