Changing flood types reshape Europe’s flood-rich eras
Europe’s 1960–2010 flood-rich and flood-poor periods track shifts among rainfall-on-dry, rainfall-on-wet, rain-on-snow, and snowmelt floods, not rainfall totals alone.
Source
Shifts in flood generation processes exacerbate regional flood anomalies in Europe
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Changing flood types reshape Europe’s flood-rich eras
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The analysis used 1353 European catchments.
The analysis of observed streamflow data in 1353 European catchments suggests that, in the South and the North of Europe, prevailing flood-rich periods have shifted to prevailing flood-poor periods in the last 50 years, while the opposite is the case in the Northwest of Europe.
The European flood database has 2370 catchments for 1960–2010.
In this study, we use the European flood database , , which contains information on the date and the maximum peak discharge of observed annual maximum floods in 2370 European catchments for the period from 1960 to 2010.
What they did
Authors classified annual maximum floods in 1353 catchments (from a 2370-catchment database plus mHM soil-moisture) into Rain.Dry, Rain.Wet, Rain.Snow, and Snowmelt, detected flood-rich/poor anomalies, and tested process frequencies plus 7-day extreme rain as predictors.
What they found
Process frequencies changed markedly: many catchments saw more Rain.Wet and fewer snowmelt floods. North and Mediterranean shifted from flood-rich to flood-poor; Atlantic Northwest went the other way. Process shifts and 7-day precipitation maxima significantly explain flood-poor anomalies; 1-day maxima explain less.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Classification uses thresholds and modelled soil moisture, so events can be mis-typed. 1960–2010 cannot isolate greenhouse forcing from decadal circulation. Mediterranean ‘worst of both worlds’ (scarcer water, stubborn large floods) is interpretive.
Key terms
- Flood-rich / flood-poor
- Multi-year periods when floods are unusually frequent/large or unusually scarce.
- Rain.Dry
- Flood generated by rainfall on dry soils.
- Rain.Wet
- Flood generated by rainfall on already wet soils.
- Rain.Snow
- Flood from simultaneous rain and snowmelt.
- mHM
- mesoscale Hydrologic Model providing soil-moisture states for classification.
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Europe’s flood-type classes include:
Common questions
Why not just use extreme rainfall trends?
Land-surface flood generation is shifting, which changes which storms become floods.
Who became flood-poor?
Northern and Mediterranean regions after early flood-rich decades.
Who became flood-rich?
The Atlantic/northwest, aligned with more Rain.Wet events.
7-day or 1-day rain?
7-day maxima explain anomalies better than 1-day maxima.
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