Historical changes in frequency of extreme floods in Prague

Elleder, L.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4307-2015

Articles | Volume 19, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4307-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Floods and their changes in historical times – a European...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4307-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 10

Research article

|

23 Oct 2015

Research article |

| 23 Oct 2015

Historical changes in frequency of extreme floods in Prague

L. Elleder

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Final revised paper (published on 23 Oct 2015)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 04 Feb 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC C245: 'Suggestions for manuscript hess-2014-553 (Elleder - Historical floods Prague)', Juergen Herget, 20 Feb 2015
- AC C792: 'Answer to the review', Libor Elleder, 31 Mar 2015
RC C290: 'Referee Comments to manuscript HESS-2014-553', Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Feb 2015
- AC C696: 'Answer to the review', Libor Elleder, 27 Mar 2015
SC C516: 'Referee Comments to manuscript hess-2014-553 (historical floods in Prague)', Marian Melo, 10 Mar 2015
RC C557: 'Referee Comments to manuscript hess-2014-553 (historical floods in Prague)', Marian Melo, 13 Mar 2015
- AC C701: 'Response to the reviewer', Libor Elleder, 27 Mar 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (13 Apr 2015) by Günter Blöschl

Dear Dr. Elleder
Thank you for responding to the reviewer comments.

Concerning the request of the reviewers to provide more detailed information on the dataset. If there are property-issues with the dataset then, of course, a full data table cannot be added, but this should be spelled out in the paper. The number of items would not be prohibitive as a couple of hundred items can easily be accommodated in a Supplement. So it should be stated which part of the data base is the property of the Czech Hydrometeorological Service and which is not. Detailed information on all parts of the data base needs to be given. I find it a little surprising that information on, say, the 1342 and 1784 floods should be classified. Without more detailed information on the data, the findings of the paper are hard to justify.

There are also remaining questions with the content of the main graph of the paper and this is likely the reason why the reviewers requested more detailed information. For example, it is not clear why the paper suggests that the 1784 Feb/March flood was not influenced by ice jams as contemporary texts do mention ice. Another example that needs clarification is the 1342 flood event. In February 1342 there was a similar flood as in 1784 (i.e. probably with ice jamming) as reported by Brazdil and Kotyza in their 1995 book, while the paper simply dates this Vltava flood for July 1342 which may not be easy to justify. The paper makes the impression that there were no ice jam floods on the Vltava.

I would also suggest providing a more detailed response to Dr. Herget’s comment regarding a Central European seasonality reconstruction.

Finally, it also appears that the bibliography is missing a number of entries that are referred to in the text.

Please submit a revised manuscript that addresses all the review comments. The revision will be rereviewed.

Best wishes
Günter Blöschl

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AR by Libor Elleder on behalf of the Authors (31 Jul 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (19 Aug 2015) by Günter Blöschl

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (31 Aug 2015)

ED: Publish as is (09 Sep 2015) by Günter Blöschl

AR by Libor Elleder on behalf of the Authors (16 Sep 2015)

Short summary

A flood frequency analysis for the Vltava River catchment based on an interpretation of documentary sources was carried out for a major profile in Prague. Six flood-rich periods in total were identified for 1118–2013. The most important were in the 16th and 19th centuries. The territory of the present Czech Republic might have experienced in the past, extreme floods comparable, with regard to peak discharge (higher than or equal to Q10) and frequency, to the flood events recorded recently.