The impact of climate change on flood frequency distributions: A case study of the Kemptville Creek watershed

Distributions of future extreme hydrologic events represent a major concern in the context of climate change and its potential impacts. The accurate inference of their probability distribution for a given period (present or future) is crucial for the safe and economic design of a range of engineering works, from hydraulic structures such as dam spillways and bridges, to flow routing infrastructure such as culverts, stormwater ponds and channels.;These distributions are likely to evolve with climate change and the development of methods to estimate possible impacts on extreme event distributions has become a key area of study. In this study the impact of climate change on flood frequency distributions is ascertained through a combination of physical modeling and statistical analysis. This approach utilizes two of the most valuable tools in the field; general circulation models (GCMs) and non-stationary extreme value analysis, and seeks to capitalize on the strengths of established methods while limiting the number of unnecessary assumptions.