Spatial Patterns and Characteristics of Flood Seasonality in Europe

Hall, Julia; Blöschl, Günter

doi:10.5194/hess-2017-649

Cited by 17 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Previous works that quantitatively (e.g., Berghuijs et al, ) or qualitatively infer (e.g., Hall & Blöschl, ) dominant flood drivers based on seasonality characteristics primarily base this on the mean date of flooding. Here we also use the concentration of floods to estimate the importance of flood drivers.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relative Importance of Different Flood‐Generating Mechanisms Across Europe

Berghuijs

Harrigan

Molnár

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

221

226

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Inferring the mechanisms causing river flooding is key to understanding past, present, and future flood risk. However, a quantitative spatially distributed overview of the mechanisms that drive flooding across Europe is currently unavailable. In addition, studies that classify catchments according to their flood-driving mechanisms often identify a single mechanism per location, although multiple mechanisms typically contribute to flood risk. We introduce a new method that uses seasonality statistics to estimate the relative importance of extreme precipitation, soil moisture excess, and snowmelt as flood drivers. Applying this method to a European data set of maximum annual flow dates in several thousand catchments reveals that from 1960 to 2010 relatively few annual floods were caused by annual rainfall peaks. Instead, most European floods were caused by snowmelt and by the concurrence of heavy precipitation with high antecedent soil moisture. For most catchments, the relative importance of these mechanisms has not substantially changed during the past five decades. Exposing the regional mechanisms underlying Europe's most costly natural hazard is a key first step in identifying the processes that require most attention in future flood research.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relative Importance of Different Flood‐Generating Mechanisms Across Europe

Berghuijs

Harrigan

Molnár

et al. 2019

Water Resources Research

221

226

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“…Europe was subdivided in two ways to capture regional patterns of flood-rich and flood-poor periods ( Figure 2). The first division consists of five regions representing hydroclimatic variability which are a particularization of the eleven biogeographic regions of Roekaerts (2002), guided by the flood seasonalities of Blöschl et al (2017) and Hall and Blöschl (2018). The second partitioning consists of the three hydroclimatic regions identified by Blöschl, Hall, et al (2019).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting Flood‐Rich and Flood‐Poor Periods in Annual Peak Discharges Across Europe

Lun

Fischer

Viglione

et al. 2020

Water Resources Research

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This paper proposes a method from Scan statistics for identifying flood‐rich and flood‐poor periods (i.e., anomalies) in flood discharge records. Exceedances of quantiles with 2‐, 5‐, and 10‐year return periods are used to identify periods with unusually many (or few) threshold exceedances with respect to the reference condition of independent and identically distributed random variables. For the case of flood‐rich periods, multiple window lengths are used in the identification process. The method is applied to 2,201 annual flood peak series in Europe between 1960 and 2010. Results indicate evidence for the existence of flood‐rich and flood‐poor periods, as about 2 to 3 times more anomalies are detected than what would be expected by chance. The frequency of the anomalies tends to decrease with an increasing threshold return period which is consistent with previous studies, but this may be partly related to the method and the record length of about 50 years. In the northwest of Europe, the frequency of stations with flood‐rich periods tends to increase over time and the frequency of stations with flood‐poor periods tends to decrease. In the east and south of Europe, the opposite is the case. There appears to exist a turning point around 1970 when the frequencies of anomalies start to change most clearly. This turning point occurs at the same time as a turning point of the North Atlantic Oscillation index. The method is also suitable for peak‐over‐threshold series and can be generalized to higher dimensions, such as space and space‐time.

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“…Gu et al, 2017) and flooding (e.g. Villarini, 2016; Hall and Blöschl, 2018). The null hypothesis of circular statistics, when applied to timing, is that data are evenly distributed (uniform), with no tendency to cluster.…”

Section: Circular Statistics and Methods For Detection Of Shifts In Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonstationary weather and water extremes: a review of methods for their detection, attribution, and management

Slater¹,

Anderson²,

Buechel³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Hydroclimatic extremes such as intense rainfall, floods, droughts, heatwaves, and wind/storms have devastating effects each year. One of the key challenges for society is understanding how these extremes are evolving and likely to unfold beyond their historical distributions under the influence of multiple drivers such as changes in climate, land cover, and other human factors. Methods for analysing hydroclimatic extremes have advanced considerably in recent decades. Here we provide a review of the drivers, metrics and methods for the detection, attribution, prediction and projection of nonstationary hydroclimatic extremes. We discuss issues and uncertainty associated with these approaches (e.g arising from insufficient record length, spurious nonstationarities, or incomplete representation of nonstationary sources in modelling frameworks), examine empirical and simulation-based frameworks for analysis of nonstationary extremes, and identify gaps for future research.

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Spatial Patterns and Characteristics of Flood Seasonality in Europe

Cited by 17 publications

References 14 publications

The Relative Importance of Different Flood‐Generating Mechanisms Across Europe

The Relative Importance of Different Flood‐Generating Mechanisms Across Europe

Detecting Flood‐Rich and Flood‐Poor Periods in Annual Peak Discharges Across Europe

Nonstationary weather and water extremes: a review of methods for their detection, attribution, and management

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