The 12-13 november 1999 flash flood in southern France
L'épisode de crue soudaine du 12-13 novembre 1999 dans le Sud de la France
Bechtold, P. ; Bazile, E.
Année de publication
2001
The flash flood that occurred on 1213 November 1999 in meridional
France is documented. This event caused 35 fatalities and severe damage
to property as rainfall totals locally exceeded 550 mm in 24 h and 620
mm in 48 h.The main issue of the present study is to discuss how
realistically the spatial and temporal rainfall distribution of this
flash flood event can be represented with present state-of-the-art
operational and research modeling frameworks. The predictability of the
present event for different forecast ranges is investigated and
sensitivity studies are conducted in order to discuss the influence of
model physics (convection, microphysics), atmospheric moisture analysis
and Mediterranean sea surface temperature forcing on the quality of the
results. It is shown that the present event could be reasonably
predicted on forecast ranges of 23 days as it was essentially
determined by strong moisture advection from the Mediterranean coupled
with frontal and orographical lifting. However, precipitation scores
show significant sensitivity to both analysis errors and model physics</div>
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