Changing climate shifts timing of European floods
Flooding along the river
Will a warming climate affect river floods? The prevailing sentiment is yes, but a consistent signal in flood magnitudes has not been found. Blöschl et al. analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the past 50 years and found clear patterns of changes in flood timing that can be ascribed to climate effects (see the Perspective by Slater and Wilby). These variations include earlier spring snowmelt floods in northeastern Europe, later winter floods around the North Sea and parts of the Mediterranean coast owing to delayed winter storms, and earlier winter floods in western Europe caused by earlier soil moisture maxima.
Abstract
A warming climate is expected to have an impact on the magnitude and timing of river floods; however, no consistent large-scale climate change signal in observed flood magnitudes has been identified so far. We analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the past five decades, using a pan-European database from 4262 observational hydrometric stations, and found clear patterns of change in flood timing. Warmer temperatures have led to earlier spring snowmelt floods throughout northeastern Europe; delayed winter storms associated with polar warming have led to later winter floods around the North Sea and some sectors of the Mediterranean coast; and earlier soil moisture maxima have led to earlier winter floods in western Europe. Our results highlight the existence of a clear climate signal in flood observations at the continental scale.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Supplementary Text
Figs. S1 to S5
Tables S1 and S2
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References and Notes
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Science
Volume 357 | Issue 6351
11 August 2017
11 August 2017
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
Submission history
Received: 17 March 2017
Accepted: 30 June 2017
Published in print: 11 August 2017
Acknowledgments
Supported by ERC Advanced Grant “FloodChange,” project no. 291152; the Austrian Science Funds (FWF) as part of the Doctoral Programme on Water Resource Systems (W1219-N22); the EU FP7 project SWITCH-ON (grant 603587); and Russian Science Foundation project no. 14-17-00155. We acknowledge the involvement in the data screening process of C. Álvaro Díaz, I. Borzì, E. Diamantini, K. Jeneiová, M. Kupfersberger, and S. Mallucci during their stays at the Vienna University of Technology. We thank L. Gaál and D. Rosbjerg for contacting Finish and Danish data holders, respectively; A. Christofides for pointing us to the Greek data source; B. Renard (France), T. Kiss (Hungary), W. Rigott (South Tyrol, Italy), G. Lindström (Sweden), and P. Burlando (Switzerland) for assistance in preparing and/or providing data or metadata from their respective regions; and B. Lüthi and Y. Hundecha for preparing supporting data that are not part of the paper, to cross-check the results. The flood date data used in this paper can be downloaded from www.hydro.tuwien.ac.at/fileadmin/mediapool-hydro/Downloads/Data.zip. The precipitation and temperature data can be downloaded from www.ecad.eu/download/ensembles/ensembles.php. The soil moisture data can be downloaded from www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd.
Authors
Funding Information
FP7 Environment: award306788, 603587
European Research Council: award306786, 291152
Austrian Science Fund: award306787, W1219-N22
Russian Science Foundation: award306789, 14-17-00155
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