Review of trend analysis and climate change projections of extreme precipitation and floods in Europe

Abstract

Please cite this article as: Madsen, H., Lawrence, D., Lang, M., Martinkova, M., Kjeldsen, T.R., Review of trend analysis and climate change projections of extreme precipitation and floods in Abstract This paper presents a review of trend analysis of extreme precipitation and hydrological floods in Europe based on observations and future climate projections. The review summaries methods and methodologies applied and key findings from a large number of studies. Reported analyses of observed extreme precipitation and flood records show that there is some evidence of a general increase in extreme precipitation, whereas there are no clear indications of significant trends at large-scale regional or national level of extreme streamflow. Several studies from regions dominated by snowmelt-induced peak flows report decreases in extreme streamflow and earlier spring snowmelt peak flows, likely caused by increasing temperature. The review of likely future changes based on climate projections indicates a general increase in extreme precipitation under a future climate, which is consistent with the observed trends. Hydrological projections of peak flows show large impacts in many areas with both positive and negative changes. A general decrease in flood magnitude and earlier spring floods are projected for catchments with snowmelt-dominated peak flows, which is consistent with the observed trends.Finally, existing guidelines in Europe on design flood and design rainfall estimation are reviewed. The review shows that only few countries have developed guidelines that incorporate a consideration of climate change impacts.

Extremes and Recurrence in Dynamical Systems

“…[63] -use of EVT. See also [5,4,64] comprehensive reviews. Another aspect to be mentioned is the role of noise or finite precision in observations.…”

Detection and attribution of urbanization effect on flood extremes using nonstationary flood‐frequency models

“…The difference between each model resides in the covariates used to model the location parameter, while the scale (r) and shape (n) parameters are assumed to be constant and not related to the covariate values. ML estimates for r and n and their standard errors in each model are shown in Madsen et al [2014], the log likelihood values can be used to perform likelihood ratio (LR) tests and evaluate if the addition of a covariate in a model corresponds to a substantial increase in the variance explained by the model. LR tests can be performed only for nested models, i.e., models for which the model with less parameters can be obtained by constraining some of the parameters of the model with more parameters.…”

“…Traditionally, nonstationarity in flood estimation was either ignored or sometimes acknowledged through the simple use of multiplication factors. For example, design rainfall and flood estimates are routinely increased by a factor between 20% and 30% to account for future impacts of climate change [Madsen et al, 2014], similarly urbanization is often accounted for by first deriving flood statistics as if a catchment is rural and then postadjusting the as-rural estimates according to the level of urbanization in a given catchment [Kjeldsen, 2010;Madsen et al, 2014].…”

Flood risk, climate change and settlement development: a micro-scale assessment of Austrian municipalities

“…It is also stated that ''with high confidence, floods larger than recorded since the twentieth century occurred during the past five centuries in northern and central Europe, the western Mediterranean region and eastern Africa''. For Europe, although there is some evidence of a general increase in extreme precipitation, no conclusive evidence is available for climate-related trends of extreme flow for the future (Barredo 2007(Barredo , 2009Kundzewicz 2012;Madsen et al 2014).…”