Author(s): Thannob Aribarg; Natthapol Thongthaeng; Siriporn Supratid; Seree Supratid
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Climate change; Vulnerability; PRECIS; Bangkok; ECHAM5
Abstract: The severe flooding in Thailand in 2011 was triggered by the tropical storm Nock-ten at end of July along the Mekong and Chao Phraya river basin. There are 4 additional storms that caused medium to heavy rainfall from June to October in the north and north-east of Thailand. Due to limited capacity of the Chao Phraya river and also Pasak river, several overbank flows occurred and also dikes along the river were broken causing excessive flow to many communities beside the river and downstream. The consequence was a total of 815 deaths with 13.6 million people affected and over 20,000km2 farmland devastated. Total estimated economic damage was about 45.7 billion US$. The main damage came from manufacturing industry as seven major industrial estates in the northern provinces of Bangkok were submerged 2-3 m during high flood. This caused interruption to supply chain to car parts regionally and world-wide, e.g. electronic components and hard disk drives. This paper features the development of future rain fall projections for Bangkok on monthly resolution for each year from 2012 to 2039 by using the Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS) with three bias correction methods, namely linear scaling, local intensity scaling and distribution mapping. The findings will certainly be useful to the policy makers in pondering, e.g. whether the current drainage network system is sufficient to meet the changing climate, and a range of flood adaptation and mitigation measures.
Year: 2014