Tropical cyclones and flooding

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are responsible for multiple hazards, including storm surge, strong winds, heavy rainfall, and flooding. This chapter provides a review of TC rainfall and flooding across the world. The contributions of these storms to overall rainfall amounts and extremes are mainly observed along the eastern US coast, the Caribbean, northwestern Australia, and East Asia within a range of 150–400km from the coast. In addition, changes in TC contribution to extreme rainfall events are also affected by their duration, with a larger contribution for increasing accumulation time. Floods are not solely dependent on heavy rainfall, but they are influenced by several other hydrological variables such as soil moisture, basin shape, and size. In TC-prone areas, flood events can also be affected by additional TC-related factors, including storm surge and the translational speed. Therefore the relative importance of landfalling TCs as a flood-generating mechanism varies greatly across the globe, with a tendency toward overlap between the highest (or lowest) proportion of TC-induced flood events and those with the highest (or lowest) mean annual TC rainfall contributions.