Articles | Volume 28, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-833-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-28-833-2024
Research article
 | 
21 Feb 2024
Research article |  | 21 Feb 2024

What controls the tail behaviour of flood series: rainfall or runoff generation?

Elena Macdonald, Bruno Merz, Björn Guse, Viet Dung Nguyen, Xiaoxiang Guan, and Sergiy Vorogushyn

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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on hess-2023-186', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 Aug 2023
    • AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Elena Macdonald, 06 Sep 2023
      • RC3: 'Reply on AC1 : Parallelism of Pct and Q, effect of Cperc, impervious catchments', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Sep 2023
        • AC2: 'Reply on RC3', Elena Macdonald, 26 Sep 2023
  • RC2: 'Comment on hess-2023-186', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Sep 2023
    • AC3: 'Reply on RC2', Elena Macdonald, 26 Sep 2023

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload
ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (19 Oct 2023) by Efrat Morin
AR by Elena Macdonald on behalf of the Authors (09 Nov 2023)  Author's response   Author's tracked changes   Manuscript 
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Nov 2023) by Efrat Morin
RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (30 Nov 2023)
RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (15 Jan 2024)
ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (24 Jan 2024) by Efrat Morin
AR by Elena Macdonald on behalf of the Authors (02 Feb 2024)  Author's response   Author's tracked changes   Manuscript 
ED: Publish as is (08 Feb 2024) by Efrat Morin
AR by Elena Macdonald on behalf of the Authors (08 Feb 2024)
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Short summary
In some rivers, the occurrence of extreme flood events is more likely than in other rivers – they have heavy-tailed distributions. We find that threshold processes in the runoff generation lead to such a relatively high occurrence probability of extremes. Further, we find that beyond a certain return period, i.e. for rare events, rainfall is often the dominant control compared to runoff generation. Our results can help to improve the estimation of the occurrence probability of extreme floods.