ABSTRACT
A large body of scientific research has demonstrated a changing climate, which affects river flow regimes and extreme flood frequencies and magnitudes. This research analyzes recurrence intervals and extreme flow events under changing climate projections for the entire Mississippi River Basin (MRB). Global climate projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 5 (CMIP5) datasets were used to force the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) land surface model using the Bias-Correction Spatial Disaggregation (BCSD). Resulting runoff was then used as input to the Routing Application for Parallel computatIon of Discharge (RAPID) river routing model to simulate daily flows within all 1.2 million MRB river reaches for years 1950 through 2099. Recurrence intervals for the 2-, 5-, 10-, 50-, 100-, 500- and 1000-year events were estimated and compared with historical flow observations. The changes in the frequency of extreme events are projected to vary in magnitude and by location.
