engleski

Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods

Climate change has led to concerns of increasing river floods resulting from the greater water holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere. This concern is reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses in many parts of the world, including Europe. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for designing flood protection measures and for flood risk zoning. Existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe, because of limited spatial coverage and choices in the grouping of hydrometric stations. Here we show that clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the last five decades in Europe are evident, which are likely manifestations of a changing climate. Our results suggest that (i) increasing autumn and winter rainfall has led to increasing floods in northwestern Europe, (ii) decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe and (iii) decreasing snowcover and snowmelt as a result of warmer temperatures have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of +11.4% per decade to a decrease of 23.1%. 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, which supports calls for future climate change consideration in flood risk management.

Climate change ; River floods ; Europe

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