The Role of Atmospheric Forces in Extreme Flooding

Dear Colleagues,

It is well known that floods are one of the deadliest natural disasters on earth. Atmospheric forces play a fundamental role in triggering and intensifying extreme flooding by controlling the generation, intensity, and persistence of precipitation and storm systems. Large-scale circulation patterns such as monsoons, tropical cyclones, and low-pressure systems govern moisture transport from oceans to land, often delivering intense and prolonged rainfall over catchments. The interaction between atmospheric forcing and land surface conditions, including antecedent soil moisture and snowpack, ultimately determines flood magnitude and duration, highlighting the critical role of atmospheric processes in shaping extreme flood hazards. Improved knowledge of flood frequency, duration, and inundation is a prerequisite for disaster management, infrastructure development, and environmental integrity. With recent advancements in computational methods and computing facilities, flood indicators can now be estimated more accurately and efficiently.

We seek original research articles that contribute to the continuing efforts to understand complex atmospheric and hydrological processes and accurately estimate flood magnitude, frequency and inundation across the landscape. This Special Issue also welcomes manuscripts on climate modeling, extreme floods and uncertainty analysis.  

Topics for this Special Issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Global climate modelling.
• Downscaling climate model outputs and bias correction.
• Atmospheric circulation pattern modelling to estimate the spatial and temporal distribution of heavy rainfall.
• Modelling intense convective storms and tropical cyclones that produce short-duration, high-intensity rainfall and overwhelms catchments and drainage systems.
• Orographic lifting enhances rainfall over mountainous and coastal regions, increasing flood risk downstream.
• The interaction between atmospheric forces and land surface conditions (e.g., soil saturation, snowmelt) that amplify the magnitude and duration of floods.
• Modelling climate variability and change and the subsequent increasing frequency and severity of extreme flood events.
• Flood frequency analysis: advances in methods, regional case studies, variability, and trend analysis.
• Inundation modeling: advances in computational methods and computing facilities and comparisons between methods and models.
• Inundation mapping: advances in remote sensing techniques and strengths/limitations of satellite data (e.g., Landsat, Sentinel-2, Synthetic Aperture Radar).
• Machine learning tools for flood inundation modeling.
• The application of AI for flood risk modelling.
• Flood hazard assessment and risk mapping.
• Impacts of climate change on flood magnitude and frequency.
• Sea level rise and coastal flooding.
• Uncertainty in flood modeling.

Prof. Dr. Tawatchai Tingsanchali
Dr. Fazlul Karim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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