Flood Occurrences in Tropical Coastal Intensified by Exacerbating Extreme Weather Events

Extreme weather events attributed to global climate change brought disasters into view, the 2021-2022 Malaysian Flash Flood that crushed eight states across the peninsula astonished the world. With a death toll of 56 and total damage of $14,600,000, western Peninsular Malaysia, which has withstood acute and large amounts of precipitation in a short time, suffered the worst flood since the one that occurred in 2014. This study combined recorded sociological statistics with remote sensing data, specified the historical extreme rainfall and flash flood events since 1981 in Peninsular Malaysia, including the 2021-2022 Malaysian Flash Flood, to explicit and compare the temporal and spatial characteristics of these events. Study found since 2000s flood events occurred frequency has significantly increased, including flash floods. In addition, precipitation ditribution in Peninsular Malaysia expreienced a spread to western from concentrating in east coast. A series of factors might have exacerbated flood vulnerability of this tropical peninsular coast under the intensified extreme rainfall events in the 40 years are disscussed.