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

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Beijing Fang - , Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Author)
  • Emanuele Bevacqua - , Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Author)
  • Oldrich Rakovec - , Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (Author)
  • Jakob Zscheischler - , Chair of Data Analytics in Hydro Sciences, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (Author)

Abstract

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.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3755-3775
Number of pages21
JournalHydrology and earth system sciences
Volume28
Issue number16
Publication statusPublished - 20 Aug 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

Keywords