Attribution of large-scale drivers of peak river flows in Ireland

• Main Authors: Aoibheann Brady, Julian Faraway, Ilaria Prosdocimi
• Other Authors: Brady, Aoibheann, Faraway, Julian, Prosdocimi, Ilaria
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Statistical Modelling Society 2018
• Subjects: Settore SECS-S/01 - Statistica; North Atlantic; North Atlantic oscillation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10278/3710050

Several large flooding events in recent years have led to increased concerns that climate change may be affecting the risk of flooding. At-site tests assessing whether change can be detected in observed data are not very powerful and cannot fully differentiate between possible confounders. It is also difficult to detect fully climate-driven trends, and separate these from other anthropogenic impacts such as urbanisation. We propose a change in focus from detection only towards both detecting and attributing trends in peak river flows to large-scale climate drivers such as the North Atlantic Oscillation index. We focus on a set of near-natural “benchmark” catchments in Ireland in order to detect those non-human driven trends. In order to enhance our ability to detect a signal, we model all stations together in a Bayesian framework which is implemented through Stan.