A River Runs Through It: Predicting Floods in the Midwest

Andy Barnston. Photo by Brian Kahn, IRI.

Three of North America’s major rivers run through the Midwestern U.S. In the spring of 2011, major flooding in region caused an estimated $3 billion in damages and killed seven people. Although scientists cannot predict exact precipitation amounts for a given season, they can attempt to predict the odds that a given season will have below average, average, and above average precipitation.

Elisabeth Gawthrop, Climate and Society ’13, interviewed IRI scientist Andrew Robertson, who studies how climate variability across multiple timescales, from daily to decades, affects these forecasts. Read her Q&A with Andy on the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet blog, here.