Flood Events of Selected European Rivers in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

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Study of historical flood events on Spanish rivers using documentary data

“…Two main peaks can be noticed, corresponding to the decades 1591-1600 and 1781-1790. In the first case, this result is in good agreement with the study of European river floods during the 16th century, such as the River Garonne in France, with a consistent increase in the frequency of floods in Toulouse and Agen from the 13th to the 19th centuries (Brázdil et al, 1999). At the end of the 18th century, winter precipitation anomalies over Spain have been associated with pressure anomalies centred over the Atlantic Ocean northwest of the Iberian Peninsula (Pauling et al, 2006).…”

“…A large unpublished initiative was carried out by José María Fontana Tarrats, who collected historical data for the whole country during the 1960s to 1970s (see Acknowledgements), which were partially published thanks to Inocencio Font Tullot (1988). Present research from university research teams has permitted the recovery and analysis of different flood chronologies (Grimalt, 1992;Barriendos & Pomés, 1993;Barriendos & Martín-Vide, 1998;Brázdil et al, 1999;Benito et al, 2003;Llasat et al, 2005).…”

“…Finally, it seems that the frequency of floods shows a decreasing trend during the 19th century. The possible effects of development and occupation of basins and banks must also be taken into account to explain the reduced number and intensity of floods in the 20th century (Brázdil et al, 1999;Trigo et al, 2004). Figure 7 shows the decadal frequency of floods in Mediterranean Basin rivers.…”

Stationarity analysis of historical flood series in France and Spain (14th–20th centuries)

“…The following list of criteria is derived from previous experience in different case studies (Le Roy Ladurie, 1967;Alexandre, 1987;Pfister, 1988;Barriendos and Martin-Vide, 1998;Brázdil et al, 1999): a) Accessibility of the documents: The documentary series must be available to the public under optimum working conditions to allow orderly consultation within a reasonable time. b) Continuity of the records: The documentary series must have temporally continuous records to ensure that there was no flood that eluded the recording system.…”

“…For this reason, the reconstruction of flood event chronologies and their atmospheric patterns when produced by extensive or heavy rainfall can be estimated from proxy-data contained in documentary sources. This information is available for the past millennium in particular locations, and for the last 500 years in a large number of locations throughout Europe Barriendos and Martin-Vide, 1998;Brázdil et al, 1999;Coeur and Lang, 2002;Llasat and Barriendos, 2001;Glaser and Stangl, 2003). But an objective analysis calls for the definition of methods and statistical procedures to produce calibrated series and reconstruction of data in quantitative conventional format.…”