%0 Journal Article
%@ 0043-1656
%A Gale, EL
%A Saunders, MA
%D 2013
%F discovery:1392418
%J WEATHER
%N 9
%P 233 - 237
%T The 2011 Thailand flood: climate causes and return periods
%U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1392418/
%V 68
%X Thailand is one of the wealthiest and most  developed countries in southeast Asia.  However, its tropical location and the influence  of seasonal monsoon rains and local  topography make it prone to floods. The  floods in 2011 were especially severe, causing  estimated losses of US $30 billion (economic;  Swiss Re, 2012) and US $12 billion  (insured; Swiss Re, 2012). The insured loss  ranks easily as the highest-ever worldwide  from a freshwater flood disaster (Swiss Re,  2012). The primary reason for the floods was  record rainfall: over Thailand as a whole,  annual rainfall in 2011 was the highest in the  country’s 61-year precipitation record (Thai  Meteoro logical Department, 2011). In this  article we first review the nature, impacts and  historical ranking of the 2011 Thailand floods.  We then examine the 2011 rainfall totals and  anomalies across Thailand and use these  with other data to discuss the climate causes  for the exceptional rainfall. We then estimate  the rainfall return period for this flooding  event and compare this with satellite-derived  return periods for the 2011 river flow. Finally,  we bring together the different estimated  return periods to provide a firmer assessment  of how likely it is that a flood of the  magnitude of 2011 will happen again.
%Z © 2013 The Authors. Weather published by  John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal  Meteorological Society  This is an open access article under the  terms of the Creative Commons Attribution  License, which permits use, distribution and  reproduction in any medium, provided the  original work is properly cited.