HAL Id: hal-02600780
https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-02600780
Submitted on 16 May 2020
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Climate-driven trends in the occurrence of major floods in North America and Europe
G.A. Hodgkins, P.H. Whitfield, D.H. Burn, J. Hannaford, Benjamin Renard, Konrad Stahl, A.K. Fleig, H. Madsen, L. Mediero, J. Korhonen, et al.
To cite this version:
G.A. Hodgkins, P.H. Whitfield, D.H. Burn, J. Hannaford, Benjamin Renard, et al.. Climate-driven
trends in the occurrence of major floods in North America and Europe. AGU Fall Meeting, Dec 2014,
San Francisco, United States. pp.1, 2014. �hal-02600780�
1940 1960 1980 2000
0.000.010.020.030.04
Year
Probability
Study design Study design
Climate-driven trends in the occurrence of major floods in North America and Europe
Glenn A. Hodgkins, U.S. Geological Survey, Augusta, ME, USA Paul H. Whitfield, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Donald H. Burn, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada Jamie Hannaford, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, United Kingdom Presenting: Benjamin Renard, Irstea, Hydrology-Hydraulics Research Unit, Lyon, France
Kerstin Stahl, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
Anne K. Fleig, Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, Oslo, Norway Henrik Madsen, DHI, Hørsholm, Denmark
Luis Mediero, Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain Johanna Korhonen, Finnish Environment Institute, Helsinki, Finland
Conor Murphy, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland Philippe Crochet, Icelandic Meteorological Office, Reykjavik, Iceland Donna Wilson, Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate, Oslo, Norway
Need for study Need for study
•
River basins used to study changing floods over time often are influenced by direct human alteration.•
Many previous national or regional studies analyzed changes in floods over time, such as the annual peak flow. No studies are known that analyzed changes in major floods (greater than 25-year floods) at a continental scale for minimally altered basins.•
To be useful for assessing climate-driven trends, monitored streams need to be relatively free of confounding human influences such as river-basin land-use change (e.g. urbanization), diversions, abstractions, and reservoir regulation (Whitfield et al., 2012; Burn et al., 2012).Results
•
Analyze flood flows from newly-assembled dataset comprising daily streamflow from minimally altered basins in North America (United States and Canada) and Europe (France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland)•
Estimate peak flows with recurrence intervals of 25, 50, and 100 years at each gauge, using consistent methodology: GEV with L-moments (Hosking, 2013)•
Compute annual peak flows that exceed these flood thresholds in each of the last 50 to 80 years•
Sum the number of annual flood exceedances for continents and other groups: major Köppen-Geiger climate regions (Peel et al., 2007), catchment size, and combinations•
Compute trends in the number of large floods with logistic regression (Frei and Schär, 2001)• Glenn Hodgkins: [email protected]
• Burn, D.H., Hannaford, J., Hodgkins, G.A., Whitfield, P.H., Thorne, R., and Marsh, T., 2012, Reference hydrologic networks II. Using reference hydrologic networks to assess climate-driven changes in streamflow, Hydrological Sciences Journal 57, 1580-1593.
• Frei, C. and Schär, C., 2001, Detection probability of trends in rare events: theory and application to heavy precipitation in the Alpine region, Journal of Climate 14, 1568-1584.
• Hosking, J. R. M., 2013, L-moments. R package, version 2.1.
• Peel, M. C., Finlayson, B. L. and McMahon, T. A., 2007, Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 11, 1633-1644.
• Whitfield, P.H., Burn, D.H., Hannaford, J., Higgins, H., Hodgkins, G.A., Marsh, T., and Looser, U., 2012, Reference hydrologic networks I. The status and potential future directions of national reference hydrologic networks for detecting trends: Hydrological Sciences Journal 57, 1562-1579.
Contact information and references Summary of results
Summary of results
1961-2010 1931-2010
Probability of 100-year flood, 1931-2010 All 322 streamflow gauging stations
•
No compelling evidence for consistent changes over time in major-flood occurrence•
Major-flood occurrence increased overall (1206 sites) from 1961-2010 but not significantly, primarily driven by European increases•
Major-flood occurrence increased overall (322 sites) from 1931-2010 but not significantly, primarily driven by North American increases•
Some significant increases and decreases for subgroups of gauges differentiated by catchment size, location, climate, flood threshold, and period of recordThe logistic regression odds ratio approximates the change in probability of occurrence between the beginning and end of the period
