Assessment of heavy rainfall-induced disaster potential based on an ensemble simulation of Typhoon Talas (2011) with controlled track and intensity

Abstract

Typhoon Talas (2011) caused extensive damage through landslides on the Kii Peninsula, Japan, in September 2011. The purpose of the present study is to quantitatively describe the potential for the occurrence of heavy rainfall-induced disasters if the typhoon track perturbs slightly or the typhoon intensifies. Regarding to the consideration of the track displacement of the typhoon, a procedure is proposed to generate different typhoon tracks perturbed from the original track of the typhoon. In this procedure, the position of a typhoon is artificially shifted at a certain time before landing in a physically consistent manner by applying potential vorticity inversion (PVI) methodology. After relocating the typhoon, the subsequent progress is simulated by a mesoscale meteorological model. Using the output, which consists of a set of realizations having different typhoon tracks, the worst-case scenario is discussed in terms of the soil water index (SWI) of the Kii Peninsula. The SWI is an indicator of the amount of water in soil that represents the hazard of landslide disasters. The maximum spatially averaged SWI is 1.10 times as large as that from the original typhoon track. Regarding the consideration of severer typhoon, the same method is used, but the intensity of the potential vorticity of a typhoon is artificially modified at the position instead of relocating potential vorticity to a different place. The maximum spatially averaged SWI is 1.28 times as large as that of the original typhoon intensity.