An ARkStorm (for Atmospheric River 1,000) is a "megastorm" proposed scenario based on repeated historical occurrences of atmospheric rivers and other major rain events first developed and published by the Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 2010[1] and updated as ARkStorm 2.0 in 2022.[2]
The ARkStorm 1.0 scenario describes an extreme storm that devastates much of California, causing up to $725 billion in losses (mostly due to flooding), and affecting a quarter of California's homes. The scenario projects impacts of a storm that would be significantly less intense (25 days of rain) than the California storms that occurred between December 1861 and January 1862 (43 days). That event dumped nearly 10feet of rain in parts of California.[3]
USGS sediment research in the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara Basin, Sacramento Valley, and the Klamath Mountain region found that "megastorms" have occurred in the years: 212, 440, 603, 1029,, 1418, 1605, 1750, 1810, and, most recently, 1861–1862. Based on the intervals of these known occurrences, ranging from 51 to 426 years, for a historic recurrence of, on average, every 100–200 years.[4]
Geologic evidence indicates that several of the previous events were more intense than the one in 1861–1862, particularly those in 440, 1418, 1605, and 1750, each of which deposited a layer of silt in the Santa Barbara Basin more than one inch (2.5 cm) thick. The largest event was the one in 1605, which left a layer of silt two inches (5 cm) thick, indicating that this flood was at least 50% more powerful than any of the others recorded.
The conditions built into the scenario are "two super-strong atmospheric rivers, just four days apart, one in Northern California and one in Southern California, and one of them stalled for an extra day".[5]
The ARkStorm 1.0 scenario would have the following effects:
This update, with parts of the research on impacts still ongoing, has examined how climate change is expected to increase the risk of severe flooding from a hypothetical ARkStorm, with runoff 200% to 400% above historical values for the Sierra Nevada in part due to a decrease in the portion of precipitation that falls as snow, as well as an increase in the amount of water that storms can carry. The likelihood of the event outlined in the ARkStorm scenario is now once every 25–50 years, with projected economic losses of over $1 trillion (or more than five times that of Hurricane Katrina).[7]
| Scenario | Annual Risk | 1920 Risk | 2071–2080 Risk (worst case with RCP 8.5) | Days | Precipitation | Damage (if it happened today) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great Flood of 1862 | 1.2–1.6% | 0.5–0.7% | 3.4%–4.8% | 43+ | 10feet | ||
| ARkStorm | 2–4% | 25+ | US$1 trillion+ (2010 estimate in 2022 dollars) |
Current flood maps in the U.S. rarely take recent projections from projects like ARkStorm into account, especially FEMA's maps, which many decision-makers have relied on.[8] Land owners, flood insurers, governments and media outlets often use maps like FEMA's that still fail to represent many significant risks due to: 1) using only historical data (instead of incorporating climate change models), 2) the omission of heavy rainfall events, and 3) lack of modeling of flooding in urban areas. More robust and up-to-date models, like the First Street Foundation's riskfactor.com,[9] should better represent true flood risk though it is unclear if that model, for example, incorporates any ARkStorm science.
Government agencies may decide how much risk to accept, and how much risk to mitigate. The Netherlands' approach to flood control, for example, plans for 1 in 10,000 year events in heavily-populated areas[10] and 1 in 4,000 year events in less well-populated areas.