Role of Extreme Precipitation and Initial Hydrologic Conditions on Floods in Godavari River Basin, India

Floods are the most frequent natural calamity in India. The Godavari river basin (GRB) witnessed several floods in the past 50 years. Notwithstanding the large damage and economic loss, the role of extreme precipitation and antecedent moisture conditions on floods in the GRB remains unexplored. Using the observations and the well-calibrated Variable Infiltration Capacity model, we estimate the changes in the extreme precipitation and floods in the observed (1955–2016) and projected future (2071–2100) climate in the GRB. We evaluate the role of initial hydrologic conditions and extreme precipitation on floods in both observed and projected future climate. We find a statistically significant increase in annual maximum precipitation for the catchments upstream of four gage stations during the 1955–2016 period. However, the rise in annual maximum streamflow at all the four gage stations in GRB was not statistically significant. The probability of floods driven by extreme precipitation (PF<inf>EP</inf>) varies between 0.55 and 0.7 at the four gage stations of the GRB, which declines with the size of the basins. More than 80% of extreme precipitation events that cause floods occur on wet antecedent moisture conditions at all the four locations in the GRB. The frequency of extreme precipitation events is projected to rise by two folds or more (under RCP 8.5) in the future (2071–2100) at all four locations. However, the increased frequency of floods under the future climate will largely be driven by the substantial rise in the extreme precipitation events rather than wet antecedent moisture conditions.