Contrasting rainfall-runoff characteristics of floods in desert and Mediterranean basins

Zoccatelli, Davide; Marra, Francesco; Armon, Moshe; Rinat, Yair; Smith, James A.; Morin, Efrat

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2665-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2665-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean (ACP/AMT/GMD/HESS/NHESS/OS...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2665-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 6

Research article

|

21 Jun 2019

Research article |

| 21 Jun 2019

Contrasting rainfall-runoff characteristics of floods in desert and Mediterranean basins

Davide Zoccatelli, Francesco Marra, Moshe Armon, Yair Rinat, James A. Smith, and Efrat Morin

Data sets

Rainfall-runoff characteristics of Desert and Mediterranean catchments in Israel D. Zoccatelli, F. Marra, M. Armon, Y. Rinat, J. A. Smith, and E. Morin https://doi.org/10.6096/MISTRALS-HyMeX.1501

Short summary

This study presents a comparison of flood properties over multiple Mediterranean and desert catchments. While in Mediterranean areas floods are related to rainfall amount, in deserts we observed a strong connection with the characteristics of the more intense part of storms. Because of the different mechanisms involved, despite having significantly shorter and more localized storms, deserts are able to produce floods with a magnitude comparable to Mediterranean areas.