An assessment of tropical cyclones rainfall erosivity for Taiwan

Jayalakshmi Janapati, Balaji Kumar Seela, Pay Liam Lin, Pao K. Wang, Utpal Kumar

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

38 Scopus citations

Abstract

Rainfall erosivity (or water erosion) has severe implications on agriculture, water, and land use management. Though, there were Rainfall erosivity studies on regional and global scale, tropical cyclones’ Rainfall erosivity is poorly assessed and have not been documented for one of the most cyclones affecting regions of the world like Taiwan. Here, using 15-years of raindrop size distributions (RSD) and 60-years of hourly rain gauges data, we estimated cyclones (also called typhoons) rainfall erosivity over Taiwan, and establish that typhoons’ mean rainfall erosivity is higher than the global mean rainfall erosivity. Moreover, regional variability of typhoons rainfall erosivity showed an increasing pattern from north to south (Taipei to Pingtung), with relatively higher values over eastern and southern parts of Taiwan. The annual mean erosivity of typhoons rainfall showed raising trends over eastern and southern Taiwan during 1958–2017. Our results provide an insight in assessing the land use and agricultural management for Taiwan.

Original languageEnglish
Article number15862
JournalScientific Reports
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2019

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