Hodgkins, Glenn A. and Whitfield, Paul H. and Burn, Donald H. and Hannaford, Jamie and Renard, Benjamin and Stahl, Kerstin and Fleig, Anne K. and Madsen, Henrik and Mediero, Luis and Korhonen, Johanna and Murphy, Conor and Wilson, Donna (2017) Climate-driven variability in the occurrence of major floods across North America and Europe. Journal of Hydrology, 552. pp. 704-717. ISSN 0022-1694

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Abstract

Concern over the potential impact of anthropogenic climate change on flooding has led to a proliferation of studies examining past flood trends. Many studies have analysed annual-maximum flow trends but few have quantified changes in major (25–100 year return period) floods, i.e. those that have the greatest societal impacts. Existing major-flood studies used a limited number of very large catchments affected to varying degrees by alterations such as reservoirs and urbanisation. In the current study, trends in major-flood occurrence from 1961 to 2010 and from 1931 to 2010 were assessed using a very large dataset (>1200 gauges) of diverse catchments from North America and Europe; only minimally altered catchments were used, to focus on climate-driven changes rather than changes due to catchment alterations. Trend testing of major floods was based on counting the number of exceedances of a given flood threshold within a group of gauges. Evidence for significant trends varied between groups of gauges that were defined by catchment size, location, climate, flood threshold and period of record, indicating that generalizations about flood trends across large domains or a diversity of catchment types are ungrounded. Overall, the number of significant trends in major-flood occurrence across North America and Europe was approximately the number expected due to chance alone. Changes over time in the occurrence of major floods were dominated by multidecadal variability rather than by long-term trends. There were more than three times as many significant relationships between major-flood occurrence and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation than significant long-term trends.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Major floods; Climate variability; Trends; AMO; PDO;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, ICARUS
Item ID:	11682
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.07.027
Depositing User:	Conor Murphy
Date Deposited:	12 Nov 2019 17:10
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Hydrology
Publisher:	Elsevier
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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