We investigate changes that occurred in small vs. big flood events and in small vs. large catchments across Europe over 5 decades. Annual maximum discharge series between 1960 and 2010 from 2370 gauges in Europe are analysed. Distinctive patterns of flood regime change are identified for large regions across Europe, which depend on flood magnitude and catchment size.

We investigate the seasonal memory properties of a large sample of European rivers in terms of high and low flows. We compute seasonal correlations between peak and low flows and average flows in the previous seasons and explore the links with various physiographic and hydro-climatic catchment descriptors. Our findings suggest that there is a traceable physical basis for river memory which in turn can be employed to reduce uncertainty and improve probabilistic predictions of floods and droughts.

The knowledge of discharge hydrographs is useful for flood modelling purposes, water resource management, and the design of hydraulic structures. This paper presents a novel methodology to estimate the unknown discharge hydrograph in an ungauged river section using only water level information recorded downstream. A Bayesian procedure is coupled with a 2-D hydraulic model parallelized for GPUs. Finally, the proposed procedure has been applied to estimate inflow hydrographs in real river reaches.

This study uses remotely sensed river discharge data to correct river storage and discharge in a large-scale hydrological model. The method is based on an ensemble Kalman filter and also introduces an additional technique that allows for better constraint of the correction (called localization). The approach is applied over the entire Amazon basin. Results show that the method is able to improve river discharge and localization to produce better results along main tributaries.

The paper presents an index of summer flood damage in Switzerland from 1800 to 2009 and explores the influence of solar forcing, climate variability and low-frequency atmospheric circulation on flood frequencies. The flood damage index provides evidence that the 1817-1851, 1881-1927, 1977-1990 and 2005-present flood clusters are mostly in phase with palaeoclimate proxies and solar activity minima. Floods are influenced by atmospheric instability related to the principal summer mode.