Understanding and Assessing Impacts
To assist future planning and adaptive capacity and resiliency building efforts, a series of task were undertaken as part of the study, including: an update to the Province’s flood events inventory for the period of 1950 to 2011; remote sensing and land cover classification; climate change impacts assessment; assessment of need for new/updated flood risk mapping; assessment for the need for flood forecasting. For the climate change impact assessment, flooding risk was considered for 2020, 2050 and 2080. A range of approaches were used from modelling to qualitative research. For example, Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model data was obtained through the Canadian Climate Change Scenarios Network site16 (CCCSN) to project temperature and precipitation changes. Other studies included literature reviews and publications by the Government of Canada on changes to temperature and precipitation over the province. The contractor, AMEC, also produced updated Intensity Duration Frequency (IDF) Curves for some sites. The updated IDF values for Gander and Goose Bay, showed that more intense precipitation events were already beginning to register in recent years. Finally, they considered other events that could lead to flooding such as storm surge, ice jams, spring snow melt and even the saturation of the soil.