TY  - JOUR
SN  - 0043-1656
Y1  - 2013/09//
TI  - The 2011 Thailand flood: climate causes and return periods
AV  - public
IS  - 9
N2  - 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.
ID  - discovery1392418
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wea.2133
EP  -  237
VL  - 68
N1  - © 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.
SP  - 233 
JF  - WEATHER
A1  - Gale, EL
A1  - Saunders, MA
ER  -