An increase in the spatial extent of European floods over the last 70 years

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60460709%3A41330%2F24%3A98643" target="_blank" >RIV/60460709:41330/24:98643 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3755-2024" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3755-2024</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-3755-2024" target="_blank" >10.5194/hess-28-3755-2024</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

An increase in the spatial extent of European floods over the last 70 years

Original language description

Floods regularly cause substantial damage worldwide. Changing flood characteristics, e.g., due to climate change, pose challenges to flood risk management. The spatial extent of floods is an important indicator of potential impacts, as consequences of widespread floods are particularly difficult to mitigate. The highly uneven station distribution in space and time, however, limits the ability to quantify flood characteristics and, in particular, changes in flood extents over large regions. Here, we use observation-driven routed runoff simulations over the last 70 years in Europe from a state-of-the-art hydrological model (the mesoscale Hydrologic Model - mHM) to identify large spatiotemporally connected flood events. Our identified spatiotemporal flood events compare well against an independent flood impact database. We find that flood extents increase by 11.3 % on average across Europe. This increase occurs over most of Europe, except for parts of eastern and southwestern Europe. Over northern Europe, the increase in flood extent is mainly driven by the overall increase in flood magnitude caused by increasing precipitation and snowmelt. In contrast, the increasing trend in flood extent over central Europe can be attributed to an increase in the spatial extent of heavy precipitation. Overall, our study illustrates the opportunities to combine long-term consistent regional runoff simulations with a spatiotemporal flood detection algorithm to identify large-scale trends in key flood characteristics and their drivers. The detected change in flood extent should be considered in risk assessments as it may challenge flood control and water resource 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

—

OECD FORD branch

10501 - Hydrology

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

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

Name of the periodical

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences

ISSN

1027-5606

e-ISSN

1027-5606

Volume of the periodical

28

Issue of the periodical within the volume

16

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

21

Pages from-to

3755-3775

UT code for WoS article

001293634900001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85202162794