Dynamically downscaled simulations of the north Georgia flood of 2009 under different land-use scenarios

This study uses the WRF model to simulate the week long heavy rainfall event which occurred in the North Georgia region from 15th-23rd September 2009. This event resulted in severe flooding of the surrounding areas in northern Georgia and some suburban regions of Atlanta. The study investigates whether this National Center for Environmental Prediction's (NCEP)-North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) driven WRF dynamic downscaling effort simulates this particular extreme event in size and duration comparable and consistent with the observational data. The study also looks into the possibility that land-use change, particularly urbanization, might have facilitated boundary interactions leading to enhancement of precipitation in some preferred locations within the North Georgia region as suggested in some previous studies. The results indicate that the downscaling exercise, under certain land-use scenarios, does a better job than the NARR in reproducing the higher values of the accumulated rainfall totals from this event.