Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00020699%3A_____%2F19%3AN0000122" target="_blank" >RIV/00020699:_____/19:N0000122 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1495-6" target="_blank" >https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1495-6</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1495-6" target="_blank" >10.1038/s41586-019-1495-6</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods

Original language description

Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere. These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe, because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century, suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10501 - Hydrology

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Nature

ISSN

0028-0836

e-ISSN

1476-4687

Volume of the periodical

573

Issue of the periodical within the volume

7772

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

4

Pages from-to

108-111

UT code for WoS article

000483967700043

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85071788448