Climate change and ENSO significantly enhances seasonal flood occurrence in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin

Abstract

• We assessed climate change and ENSO impacts on seasonal floods in Bangladesh. • Climate change increases flood frequency by 40% across seasons and rivers. • La Niña and El Niño impacts vary by both seasons and locations. • El Niño raises pre-monsoon flood frequency by 31% in the Brahmaputra. • La Niña raises post-monsoon floods by 37% in the Ganges. Seasonal hydrological dynamics have profound socio-economic implications for communities in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) River basin. Climate change and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase are known to impact extreme flood magnitude in GBM River, however how they affect seasonal flooding pattern is not revealed. Utilizing large ensemble climate data (comprising 6000 years of non-warming and warming climate scenarios) and the global hydrodynamic model CaMa-Flood, we assess the influence of climate change and ENSO on seasonal hydrological patterns specially focusing on maximum river flow. The quantitative effects of La Niña and El Niño are calculated utilizing the Fractional Attribution Risk (FAR) method, separately for non-warming and historical climate scenarios. We assess climate change’s impact on flooding by contrasting historical and non-warming climate conditions using the FAR method. Climate change has substantially increased the maximum river flow for all seasons. In the monsoon season, climate change amplifies the likelihood of flooding with a 10-year return period of 34 %, 46 %, and 31 % at the Hardinge Bridge, Bahadurabad, and Bhairab Bazar gauge stations of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna Rivers, respectively. The influence of ENSO still remains significant even with the influence of climate change. ENSO influence presents a nuanced picture, exhibiting variations both between seasons and across different rivers within the GBM basin. The relationship between ENSO and seasonal flood occurrence in the GBM basin can be effectively elucidated by the upward movement of moisture through vertical wind velocity, which serves as a large-scale controlling factor for flood variation.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Hydrology, 2025 · DOI ↗