Regional parent flood frequency distributions in Europe – Part 1: Is the GEV model suitable as a pan-European parent?

Abstract. This study addresses the question of the existence of a parent flood frequency distribution on a European scale. A new database of L-moment ratios of flood annual maximum series (AMS) from 4105 catchments was compiled by joining 13 national data sets. Simple exploration of the database presents the generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution as a potential pan-European flood frequency distribution, being the three-parameter statistical model that with the closest resemblance to the estimated average of the sample L-moment ratios. Additional Monte Carlo simulations show that the variability in terms of sample skewness and kurtosis present in the data is larger than in a hypothetical scenario where all the samples were drawn from a GEV model. Overall, the generalized extreme value distribution fails to represent the kurtosis dispersion, especially for the longer sample lengths and medium to high skewness values, and therefore may be rejected in a statistical hypothesis testing framework as a single pan-European parent distribution for annual flood maxima. The results presented in this paper suggest that one single statistical model may not be able to fit the entire variety of flood processes present at a European scale, and presents an opportunity to further investigate the catchment and climatic factors controlling European flood regimes and their effects on the underlying flood frequency distributions

A process-based analysis of the suitability of copula types for peak-volume flood relationships

The work aims at analyzing the bivariate relationship between flood peaks and flood volumes, with a particular focus on the type and seasonality of flood generation processes. Instead of the usual approach that deals with an analysis of the annual maxima of flood events, the current analysis includes all independent flood events in a catchment. Flood events are considered independent when they originate from distinguishably different synoptic/meteorological situations. The target region is located in the northern part of Austria, and consists of 72 small and mid-sized catchments. On the basis of the discharge measurements with a time resolution of 1 h from the period 1976–2007, independent flood events were identified and were assigned to one of the three following flood generation type categories: synoptic floods, flash floods and snowmelt floods. These were subsequently divided into two seasons, thereby separating predominantly rainfall-fed and snowmelt-fed floods. Nine frequently-used copula types were locally fitted to the samples of the flood type and seasonal data. Their goodness-of-fit was examined locally as well as analyzed in a regional scope. It was concluded that (i) treating flood processes separately is beneficial for the statistical analysis; (ii) suitability patterns of acceptable copula types are distinguishably different for the seasons/flood types considered, (iii) the Clayton and Joe copulas shows an unacceptable performance for all the seasons/flood types in the region; (iv) the rejection rate of the other copula types depends on the season/flood type and also on the sample size; (v) given that usually more than one statistically suitable dependence model exists, an uncertainty analysis of the design values in the engineering studies resulting from the choice of model seems unavoidable; (vi) reducing uncertainty in the choice of model could be attempted by a deeper hydrological analysis of the dependence structure between flood peaks and volumes in order to give hydrological support to the decision on model's suitability in specific regions and for typical flood generation mechanisms

Land use change impacts on floods at the catchment scale: Challenges and opportunities for future research

Research gaps in understanding flood changes at the catchment scale caused by changes in forest management, agricultural practices, artificial drainage and terracing are identified. Potential strategies in addressing these gaps are proposed, such as complex systems approaches to link processes across time scales, long-term experiments on physical-chemical-biological process interactions, and a focus on connectivity and patterns across spatial scales. It is suggested that these strategies will stimulate new research that coherently addresses the issues across hydrology, soil and agricultural sciences, forest engineering, forest ecology and geomorphology

Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods

Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere. These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe, because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results—arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far—suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century, suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management

On the possibilities of watershed parameterization for extreme flow estimation in ungauged basins

The estimation of design discharges and water levels of extreme floods is one of the most important parts of the design process for a large number of engineering projects and studies. Design flood estimates require a consideration of the hydrological, meteorological and physiographical situation, the legal requirements, and the available estimation techniques and methods. In the last decades changes in floods have been observed (Hall et al., 2014) which makes design flood estimation particularly challenging. Methods of design flood estimation can be applied either locally or regionally. A significant problem may arise in small catchments that are poorly gauged or when no recorded data exist. To obtain the design values in such cases, many countries have adopted procedures that fit the local conditions and requirements. One of these methods is the Soil Conservation Service – Curve number (SCS-CN) method which is often used in design flood estimation for ungauged sites, including those in Slovakia. Since the method was derived on the basis of the specific characteristics of selected river basins in the United States, it may lead to significant uncertainties in other countries with different hydrological conditions. The aim of this study was to test the SCN-CN method and derive regional runoff curve numbers based on rainfall and discharge measurements for selected region in Slovakia. The results show that the classical CN method gives too high estimates of event runoff depths and is not valid in the study area. To avoid the overestimation of runoff caused by extreme rainfall events, the use of the empirically derived regional runoff curves was tested and finally proposed for practical application in engineering hydrology

Changes in the snow water equivalent in mountainous basins in Slovakia over recent decades

Changes in snowpack and duration of snow cover can cause changes in the regime of snow and rain-snow induced floods. The recent IPCC report suggests that, in snow-dominated regions such as the Alps, the Carpathian Mountains and the northern parts of Europe, spring snowmelt floods may occur earlier in a future climate because of warmer winters, and flood hazards may increase during wetter and warmer winters, with more frequent rain and less frequent snowfall. The monitoring and modelling of snow accumulation and snow melting in mountainous catchments is rather complicated, especially due to the high spatial variability of snow characteristics and the limited availability of terrestrial hydrological data. An evaluation of changes in the snow water equivalent (SWE) during the period of 1961–2010 in the Upper Hron river basin, which is representative of the mountainous regions in Central Slovakia, is provided in this paper. An analysis of the snow cover was performed using simulated values of the snow water equivalent by a conceptual semi-distributed hydrological rainfall-runoff model. Due to the poor availability of the measured snow water equivalent data, the analysis was performed using its simulated values. Modelling of the SWE was performed in different altitude zones by a conceptual semi-distributed hydrological rainfall-runoff model. The evaluation of the results over the past five decades indicates a decrease in the simulated snow water equivalent and the snow duration in each altitude zone and in all months of the winter season. Significant decreasing trends were found for December, January and February, especially in the highest altitude zone

Joint modelling of flood peaks and volumes: A copula application for the Danube River

Flood frequency analysis is usually performed as a univariate analysis of flood peaks using a suitable theoretical probability distribution of the annual maximum flood peaks or peak over threshold values. However, other flood attributes, such as flood volume and duration, are necessary for the design of hydrotechnical projects, too. In this study, the suitability of various copula families for a bivariate analysis of peak discharges and flood volumes has been tested. Streamflow data from selected gauging stations along the whole Danube River have been used. Kendall's rank correlation coefficient (tau) quantifies the dependence between flood peak discharge and flood volume settings. The methodology is applied to two different data samples: 1) annual maximum flood (AMF) peaks combined with annual maximum flow volumes of fixed durations at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 60 days, respectively (which can be regarded as a regime analysis of the dependence between the extremes of both variables in a given year), and 2) annual maximum flood (AMF) peaks with corresponding flood volumes (which is a typical choice for engineering studies). The bivariate modelling of the extracted peak discharge - flood volume couples is achieved with the use of the Ali-Mikhail-Haq (AMH), Clayton, Frank, Joe, Gumbel, Hüsler-Reiss, Galambos, Tawn, Normal, Plackett and FGM copula families. Scatterplots of the observed and simulated peak discharge - flood volume pairs and goodness-of-fit tests have been used to assess the overall applicability of the copulas as well as observing any changes in suitable models along the Danube River. The results indicate that for the second data sampling method, almost all of the considered Archimedean class copula families perform better than the other copula families selected for this study, and that for the first method, only the upper-tail-flat copulas excel (except for the AMH copula due to its inability to model stronger relationships). © 2016 George Papaioannou et al