edu.ucar.opensky::articles:23765 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-25T06:43:26.830490 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7hd7zzq How probable is widespread flooding in the United States? 2020-10-22T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7hd7zzq https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR028096 Brunner, Manuela author Papalexiou, S. author Clark, M. P. author Gilleland, Eric author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher Widespread flooding can cause major damages and substantial recovery costs. Still, estimates of how susceptible a region is to widespread flooding are largely missing mainly because of the sparseness of widespread flood events in records. The aim of this study is to assess the seasonal susceptibility of regions in the United States to widespread flooding using a stochastic streamflow generator, which enables simulating a large number of spatially consistent flood events. Furthermore, we ask which factors influence the strength of regional flood susceptibilities. We show that susceptibilities to widespread flooding vary regionally and seasonally. They are highest in regions where catchments show regimes with a strong seasonality, that is, the Pacific Northwest, the Rocky Mountains, and the Northeast. In contrast, they are low in regions where catchments are characterized by a weak seasonality and intermittent regimes such as the Great Plains. Furthermore, susceptibility is found to be the highest in winter and spring when spatial flood dependencies are strongest because of snowmelt contributions and high soil moisture availability. We conclude that regional flood susceptibilities emerge in river basins with catchments sharing similar streamflow and climatic regimes. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2020 American Geophysical Union. None eng geoscientificInformation