ASSESSING THE EFFECT OF PREDICTED CLIMATE CHANGE ON SLOPE STABILITY IN NORTHERN THAILAND: A CASE OF DOI PUI

Abstract

Landslide is a natural disaster which occurs very often in mountainous areas. Climate is an
important determinant on the amount of moisture in the ground, which is a key to the stability of soil slope.
Therefore, climate change due to the global warming may affect the intensity of rainfall and the evaporation
in the future and influences situation of slope stability in a long time. The purpose of this study is to propose
a method for assessing the effect of climate change on slope stability using general circulation model (GCM).
A method for predicting climate change impact on slope stability is to link the antecedent precipitation index
(API), hydrological model, obtained through downscaling GCM to critical antecedent precipitation model.
The GCM is downscaled using a dynamical technique to derive regional climate models. Then a statistical
correlation is used to adjust for the basis of the regional climate model. The GCM used in this study is the
ECHAM4/OPYC3 model. The analysis found that the trend of susceptibility to slope failure depends on the
pattern of simulated rainfall and the recession constant of the antecedent precipitation index.