Assessing the dependence structure between oceanographic, fluvial, and pluvial flooding drivers along the United States coastline

Abstract

Flooding is of particular concern in low-lying coastal zones that are prone to flooding impacts from multiple drivers, such as oceanographic (storm surge and wave), fluvial (excessive river discharge), and/or pluvial (surface runoff). In this study, we analyse, for the first time, the compound flooding potential along the contiguous United States (CONUS) coastline from all flooding drivers, using observations and reanalysis data sets. We assess the overall dependence from observations by using Kendall's rank correlation coefficient (τ) and tail (extremal) dependence (χ). Geographically, we find the highest dependence between different drivers at locations in the Gulf of Mexico, southeastern, and southwestern coasts. Regarding different driver combinations, the highest dependence exists between surge–waves, followed by surge–precipitation, surge–discharge, waves–precipitation, and waves–discharge. We also perform a seasonal dependence analysis (tropical vs. extra-tropical season), where we find higher dependence between drivers during the tropical season along the Gulf and parts of the East Coast and stronger dependence during the extra-tropical season on the West Coast. Finally, we compare the dependence structure of different combinations of flooding drivers, using observations and reanalysis data, and use the Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence to assess significance in the differences of the tail dependence structure. We find, for example, that models underestimate the tail dependence between surge–discharge on the East and West coasts and overestimate tail dependence between surge–precipitation on the East Coast, while they underestimate it on the West Coast. The comprehensive analysis presented here provides new insights on where the compound flooding potential is relatively higher, which variable combinations are most likely to lead to compounding effects, during which time of the year (tropical versus extra-tropical season) compound flooding is more likely to occur, and how well reanalysis data capture the dependence structure between the different flooding drivers.