Articles | Volume 26, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-469-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-469-2022
Research article
 | 
31 Jan 2022
Research article |  | 31 Jan 2022

Extreme floods in Europe: going beyond observations using reforecast ensemble pooling

Manuela I. Brunner and Louise J. Slater

Related authors

Suspended sediment concentrations in Alpine rivers: from annual regimes to sub-daily extreme events
Amber van Hamel, Peter Molnar, Joren Janzing, and Manuela Irene Brunner
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2975–2995, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2975-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2975-2025, 2025
Short summary
Drought decreases annual streamflow response to precipitation, especially in arid regions
Alessia Matanó, Raed Hamed, Manuela I. Brunner, Marlies H. Barendrecht, and Anne F. Van Loon
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 29, 2749–2764, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2749-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-2749-2025, 2025
Short summary
Can Weather Patterns Contribute to Predicting Winter Flood Magnitudes Using Machine Learning?
Emma Ford, Manuela I. Brunner, Hannah Christensen, and Louise Slater
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1493,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1493, 2025
Short summary
What is a drought-to-flood transition? Pitfalls and recommendations for defining consecutive hydrological extreme events
Bailey J. Anderson, Eduardo Muñoz-Castro, Lena M. Tallaksen, Alessia Matano, Jonas Götte, Rachael Armitage, Eugene Magee, and Manuela I. Brunner
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1391,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1391, 2025
Short summary
How well do hydrological models simulate streamflow extremes and drought-to-flood transitions?
Eduardo Muñoz-Castro, Bailey J. Anderson, Paul C. Astagneau, Daniel L. Swain, Pablo A. Mendoza, and Manuela I. Brunner
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-781,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-781, 2025
Short summary

Cited articles

Alfieri, L., Burek, P., Dutra, E., Krzeminski, B., Muraro, D., Thielen, J., and Pappenberger, F.: GloFAS-global ensemble streamflow forecasting and flood early warning, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 17, 1161–1175, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-17-1161-2013, 2013. a
Barnard, C., Krzeminski, B., Mazzetti, C., Decremer, D., Carton de Wiart, C., Harrigan, S., Blick, M., Ferrario, I., and Wetterhall, F., and Prudhomme, C.: Reforecasts of river discharge and related data by the European Flood Awareness System, version 4.0, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store (CDS) [data set], https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.c83f560f, 2020. a, b, c
Bartholmes, J. C., Thielen, J., Ramos, M. H., and Gentilini, S.: The european flood alert system EFAS – Part 2: Statistical skill assessment of probabilistic and deterministic operational forecasts, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 13, 141–153, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-13-141-2009, 2009. a
Berghuijs, W. R., Harrigan, S., Molnar, P., Slater, L. J., and Kirchner, J. W.: The relative importance of different flood-generating mechanisms across Europe, Water Resour. Res., 55, 4582–4593, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019WR024841, 2019. a, b
Blöschl, G., Hall, J., Viglione, A., Perdigão, R., Parajka, R., Merz, B., Lun, D., Arheimer, B., Aronica, G., Bilibashi, A., Boháč, M., Bonacci, O., Borga, M., Čanjevac, I., Castellarin, A., Chirico, G., Claps, P., Frolova, N., Ganora, D., Gorbachova, L., Gül, A., Hannaford, J., Harrigan, S., Kireeva, M., Kiss, A., Kjeldsen, T., Kohnová, S., Koskela, J., Ledvinka, O., Macdonald, N., Mavrova-Guirguinova, M., Mediero, L., Merz, R., Molnar, P., Montanari, A., Murphy, C., Osuch, M., Ovcharuk, V., Radevski, I., Salinas, J., Sauquet, E., Šraj, M., Szolgay, J., Volpi, E., Wilson, D., Zaimi, K., and Živković, N.: Changing climate both increases and decreases European floods, Nature, 573, 108–111, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1495-6, 2019. a
Download
Short summary
Assessing the rarity and magnitude of very extreme flood events occurring less than twice a century is challenging due to the lack of observations of such rare events. Here we develop a new approach, pooling reforecast ensemble members from the European Flood Awareness System to increase the sample size available to estimate the frequency of extreme flood events. We demonstrate that such ensemble pooling produces more robust estimates than observation-based estimates.
Share