Estimating the probability of compound floods in estuarine regions

Wu, Wenyan; Westra, Seth; Leonard, Michael

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2821-2021

Articles | Volume 25, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2821-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Understanding compound weather and climate events and related...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2821-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 5

Research article

|

26 May 2021

Research article |

| 26 May 2021

Estimating the probability of compound floods in estuarine regions

Wenyan Wu, Seth Westra, and Michael Leonard

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Final revised paper (published on 26 May 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Sep 2020)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of the paper of Wu et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 05 Oct 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1 comments', Wenyan Wu, 27 Nov 2020
RC2: 'Review of Estimating the Probability of Compound Floods in Estuarine Regions', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Oct 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2 comments', Wenyan Wu, 27 Nov 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (05 Dec 2020) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Wenyan Wu on behalf of the Authors (06 Dec 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Dec 2020) by Carlo De Michele

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (31 Dec 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

L64-L66: Slightly unclear. “experiencing long term changes” Are these the long-term changes caused by the aforementioned long-term climate phenomena. If not, please provide more details of their sources.
L80: “Superposition on the astronomic tide”. The interaction of the surge and tide could be mentioned explicitly here.
Figure 2 and following paragraphs text: The text describing the approach could be simplified (in parts) by referring to the pathways outlined in Figure. It seems strange that the pathways discussed in the Figure are not mentioned at all in the text.
L296: “two components mentioned above”. The two components being referred to are not immediately obvious and should be stated. I assume you are referring to the probability/statistical modeling and hydrodynamic modeling.
Figure 3: Avon basin in the caption but Swan-Avon basin on the Map. Be consistent!
L412-413: “as only values above certain high thresholds are full accounted for”. Is it not periods where there is at least one value about the high thresholds rather than only values above a certain threshold? Also “fully accounted for” is very vague please be more specific.
L423: I think “both” rather than “either” would be more accurate.
Figure 5: Please provide a more detailed explanation of how the ‘high water level periods’ are defined. For instance, is there always a gap between the end of the initial buffer period and the first exceedance of T during an event, why? How long is the gap? Does the post event buffer always begin once Q falls below its threshold?
L607: Grammar. Remove “relatively”.
L672: Dependence estimation does not include marginal distribution estimation. I would therefore change dependence estimation to “joint probability estimation” or similar.
L687: “2) the dependence between the two flood drivers is location specific” I am not sure how this is more of a disadvantage with this method compared with the other two approaches.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (07 Jan 2021)

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (20 Jan 2021) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Wenyan Wu on behalf of the Authors (03 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Mar 2021) by Carlo De Michele

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (23 Mar 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (30 Mar 2021)

ED: Publish as is (12 Apr 2021) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Wenyan Wu on behalf of the Authors (20 Apr 2021) Manuscript

Short summary

Flood probability estimation is important for applications such as land use planning, reservoir operation, infrastructure design and safety assessments. However, it is a challenging task, especially in estuarine areas where floods are caused by both intense rainfall and storm surge. This study provides a review of approaches to flood probability estimation in these areas. Based on analysis of a real-world river system, guidance on method selection is provided.