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Current European flood-rich period exceptional compared with past 500 years
- Source :
- Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal, Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP), instacron:RCAAP, Nature, 583(7817), 560-566. Nature Publishing Group, Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC, instname, Nature, Blöschl, G, Kiss, A, Viglione, A, Barriendos, M, Böhm, O, Brázdil, R, Coeur, D, Demarée, G, Llasat, M C, Macdonald, N, Retsö, D, Roald, L, Schmocker-Fackel, P, Amorim, I, Bělínová, M, Benito, G, Bertolin, C, Camuffo, D, Cornel, D, Doktor, R, Elleder, L, Enzi, S, Garcia, J C, Glaser, R, Hall, J, Haslinger, K, Hofstätter, M, Komma, J, Limanówka, D, Lun, D, Panin, A, Parajka, J, Petrić, H, Rodrigo, F S, Rohr, C, Schönbein, J, Schulte, L, Silva, L P, Toonen, W H J, Valent, P, Waser, J & Wetter, O 2020, ' Current European flood-rich period exceptional compared with past 500 years ', Nature, vol. 583, no. 7817, pp. 560-566 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2478-3
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- There are concerns that recent climate change is altering the frequency and magnitude of river floods in an unprecedented way. Historical studies have identified flood-rich periods in the past half millennium in various regions of Europe. However, because of the low temporal resolution of existing datasets and the relatively low number of series, it has remained unclear whether Europe is currently in a flood-rich period from a long-term perspective. Here we analyse how recent decades compare with the flood history of Europe, using a new database composed of more than 100 high-resolution (sub-annual) historical flood series based on documentary evidence covering all major regions of Europe. We show that the past three decades were among the most flood-rich periods in Europe in the past 500 years, and that this period differs from other flood-rich periods in terms of its extent, air temperatures and flood seasonality. We identified nine flood-rich periods and associated regions. Among the periods richest in floods are 1560–1580 (western and central Europe), 1760–1800 (most of Europe), 1840–1870 (western and southern Europe) and 1990–2016 (western and central Europe). In most parts of Europe, previous flood-rich periods occurred during cooler-than-usual phases, but the current flood-rich period has been much warmer. Flood seasonality is also more pronounced in the recent period. For example, during previous flood and interflood periods, 41 per cent and 42 per cent of central European floods occurred in summer, respectively, compared with 55 per cent of floods in the recent period. The exceptional nature of the present-day flood-rich period calls for process-based tools for flood-risk assessment that capture the physical mechanisms involved, and management strategies that can incorporate the recent changes in risk.<br />This work was supported by the ERC Advanced Grant ‘FloodChange’ project (no. 291152), the Horizon 2020 ETN ‘System Risk’ project (no. 676027), the DFG project FOR 2416, the FWF projects I 3174 and W1219-N22, the Spanish Agency of Science and FEDER/UE projects CGL2016-75475/R, CGL2017-86839-C3-1-R, CGL2016-75996-R and CTM2017-83655-C2-2-R, the ICREA Academia programme, and project CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000797, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.
- Subjects :
- 010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
940 History of Europe
Flood-rich periods
0207 environmental engineering
Climate change
02 engineering and technology
01 natural sciences
Natural hazard
medicine
020701 environmental engineering
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Multidisciplinary
Flood myth
Geography
Flooding (psychology)
flood changes
Seasonality
medicine.disease
Documentary evidence
historical flood data
floods
Period (geology)
Physical geography
History of Europe
Geografia
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20167547 and 00280836
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal, Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP), instacron:RCAAP, Nature, 583(7817), 560-566. Nature Publishing Group, Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC, instname, Nature, Blöschl, G, Kiss, A, Viglione, A, Barriendos, M, Böhm, O, Brázdil, R, Coeur, D, Demarée, G, Llasat, M C, Macdonald, N, Retsö, D, Roald, L, Schmocker-Fackel, P, Amorim, I, Bělínová, M, Benito, G, Bertolin, C, Camuffo, D, Cornel, D, Doktor, R, Elleder, L, Enzi, S, Garcia, J C, Glaser, R, Hall, J, Haslinger, K, Hofstätter, M, Komma, J, Limanówka, D, Lun, D, Panin, A, Parajka, J, Petrić, H, Rodrigo, F S, Rohr, C, Schönbein, J, Schulte, L, Silva, L P, Toonen, W H J, Valent, P, Waser, J & Wetter, O 2020, ' Current European flood-rich period exceptional compared with past 500 years ', Nature, vol. 583, no. 7817, pp. 560-566 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2478-3
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....804c4e6b2d55a0528868f3ee443f87e3