Summer Floods in Central Europe – Climate Change Track?

Abstract

In Central Europe, river flooding has been recently recognized as a major hazard, in particular after the 1997 Odra /Oder flood, the 2001 Vistula flood, and the most destructive 2002 deluge on the Labe/Elbe. Major recent floods in central Europe are put in perspective and their common elements are identified. Having observed that flood risk and vulnerability are likely to have grown in many areas, one is curious to understand the reasons for growth. These can be sought in socio-economic domain (humans encroaching into floodplain areas), terrestrial systems (land-cover changes -urbanization, deforestation, reduction of wetlands, river regulation), and climate system. The atmospheric capacity to absorb moisture, its potential water content, and thus potential for intense precipitation, are likely to increase in a warmer climate. The changes in intense precipitation and high flows are examined, based on observations and projections. Study of projected changes in intense precipitation, using climate models, for several areas of central Europe, and in particular, for drainage basins of the upper Labe/Elbe, Odra/Oder, and Vistula is reported. Significant changes have been identified between future projections and the reference period, of relevance to flood hazard in areas, which have experienced severe recent floodings.

Fluctuations of floods of the River Morava (Czech Republic) in the 1691–2009 period: interactions of natural and anthropogenic factors

“…A concentration of extreme floods in the 1990s-2000s are also recorded in many other European countries (e.g. Kundzewicz et al, 1999Kundzewicz et al, , 2005aUlbrich et al, 2003a,b;Jaun et al, 2008;Marsh, 2008;Schmutz et al, 2008), and are sometimes attributed to the influence of global warming (Kundzewicz et al, 2005b;Solomon et al, 2007).…”

Seasonality of floods in Germany

“…Bronstert, 1995;Caspary, 1995;Mudelsee et al, 2003;Kundzewicz et al, 2005;Pinter et al, 2006). Since floods can be caused by different meteorological processes (e.g.…”

Water research in Germany: from the reconstruction of the Roman Rhine to a risk assessment for aquatic neophytes

“…However, winter snow storage as well as snow cover duration have decreased (KLIWA 2005), and small-to meso-scale winter floods occurred frequently (Bronstert et al 2017), with increasing rain-on-snow events (Freudiger et al 2014). Contrastingly, drier summers have arisen in major parts of Central Europe (Schönwiese and Rapp 1997), altering lowflow conditions (Kundzewicz et al 2005;Stahl et al 2010). These processes are exacerbated by significantly increasing trends in air temperature which have been recorded both on the large and local scales (Deutschländer and Mächel 2017;Liu and Menzel 2016).…”