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Journal acronym: THSJ

Author(s): Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz, Iwona Pinskwar and G. Robert Brakenridge

Article title: Large floods in Europe, 1985–2009

Article no: 745082

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1Hydrological Sciences Journal – Journal des Sciences Hydrologiques, 00(00) 2012

Large floods in Europe, 1985–2009

Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz1,2 , Iwona Pinskwar1 and G. Robert Brakenridge3

1Institute for Agricultural and Forest Environment, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznan, Polandkundzewicz@man.poznan.pl2Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany5

3CSDMS, INSTAAR, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA

Received 3 January 2012; accepted 21 June 2012; open for discussion until 1 July 2013

Editor D. Koutsoyiannis

Citation Kundzewicz, Z.W., Pinskwar, I., and Brakenridge, G.R., 2013. Large floods in Europe, 1985–2009. Hydrological SciencesJournal, 58 (1), 1–7.10

Abstract The paper looks at two metrics of flood events: flood severity (related to flood frequency) and floodmagnitude (related to flood severity, as above, but also to flood duration and affected area). A time series of floodinformation, over 25 years, collected by the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, is used to describe the spatio-temporalvariability of large floods in Europe. Direct factors responsible for changes in flood severity and magnitude overtime may be related to both climate and ground surface changes. Indirect links between flood severity/magnitudeand socio-economic indices occur via flood risk reduction activities, land-use change and land-cover change. Thepresent analysis shows an increasing trend during the 25-year period in the number of reported floods exceedingseverity and magnitude thresholds.

15

Key words floods; flood hazard; Europe; change detection

Grandes crues en Europe, 1985–200920Résumé Cet article se penche sur les caractéristiques des crues: la gravité (liée à la fréquence des crues) et la mag-nitude les inondations (liée à la gravité des inondations, comme ci-dessus, mais aussi à la durée d’inondation et lazone affectée). Une série chronologique des informations sur les crues, plus de 25 ans, recueillie par l’Observatoiredes inondations de Dartmouth, est utilisé pour décrire la variabilité spatio-temporelle des crues importantes enEurope. Facteurs directs responsables des changements dans la gravité et la magnitude des inondations au fil dutemps peuvent être liée à la fois les changements climatiques et la surface du sol. Les liens indirects entre lasévérité et la magnitude des inondations et indices socio-économiques se produisent à travers des activités deréduction des risques d’inondation, l’utilisation des terrains et les changements de la couverture terrestre. Laprésente analyse montre une tendance à la hausse au cours de cette période de temps dans le nombre d’inondationssignalés ci-dessus d’un seuil de la gravité et de la magnitude.

25

30

Mots clefs inondations; risques d’inondation; Europe; détection des changements

INTRODUCTION

Floods attract broad interest and media coverage.Despite the massive risk reduction efforts and billionsinvested in flood defences worldwide, floods continue35

to be an acute problem, causing increasing materialdamage and high death tolls. The economic costs ofextreme weather events (among which floods are amajor category) have exhibited a rapid upward trend:yearly damage has increased globally by an order of40

magnitude within four decades, in inflation-adjustedmonetary units (Mills 2005).

The causation of changes in flood risk mayinclude socio-economic, surface environment andclimatic changes. Flood risk can be intensified by 45

humans, who—to use the language of mechanics—may increase the load and decrease the resistanceof the system. Anthropogenic changes may haveincreased the flood magnitude for particular designprecipitation events, and also have amplified the flood 50

damage potential. Change in material flood loss canalso be attributed to increasing damage potential,including the growing wealth accumulating in highflood-risk areas.

ISSN 0262-6667 print/ISSN 2150-3435 online© 2012 IAHS Presshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02626667.2012.745082http://www.tandfonline.com

2 Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz et al.

LARGE FLOODS IN EUROPE IN RECENT55

DECADES

Although the most dramatic extreme floods, withthousands of fatalities, occur outside Europe (in par-ticular in South Asia), Europe is not immune. Therehave been several flood events with material damage60

in excess of C1 billion (euro), and the growing flooddamage has intensified concern among Europeannations.

After the flood-rich decade of the 1990s, withmany disastrous flood events in Europe, the 21st cen-65

tury has already witnessed several destructive floods.Among the destructive floods in Europe in the

1990s were those in the basins of the River Rhineand its tributaries (1993, 1995), in the MediterraneanRegion (1994), and in Central Europe (1997). The70

flood on the Rhine in December 1993 caused inun-dation of parts of the cities of Koblenz, Bonnand Cologne, and then in January and February1995 another large flood hit Germany, northernFrance, and the Netherlands. Dramatic floods devas-75

tated large areas in the Czech Republic, Poland, andthe Oder basin in Germany in July 1997.

Major floods occurred in the UK, Italy, France,and Switzerland in the year 2000. The absolute recordof annual flood loss in Europe was observed in August80

2002, when the material damage exceeded C20 bil-lion, in nominal value. This flood damaged the histor-ical cities of Prague and Dresden. Major large floodsalso occurred in Europe in 2005, 2007 and 2010.

Several different global databases collect infor-85

mation on flood damage and are regularly updated.Flood-related entry records in such databases havemultiple attributes, such as geographical information;date and duration of event; number of fatalities;economic damage; plus other information. Typically,90

economic damage is represented by “nominal” datain un-inflated US dollars ($). One of the databasesis the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), run

by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiologyof Disasters (CRED) at the Catholic University of 95

Leuven in Belgium. It was established in 1988 andcollects information on floods as well as other naturaldisasters (http://www.emdat.be/). EM-DAT is pri-marily concentrated on humanitarian aspects. Thereare also two databases run by the major reinsurance 100

companies, the NatCatSERVICE of Munich Re(https://www.munichre.com/touch/naturalhazards/en/natcatservice/default.aspx, set up in 1974),and the Sigma database of Swiss Re (http://www.swissre.com/sigma/ operating since 1970). These two 105

databases, designed to serve the insurance industry,are focused on reliable and accurate estimation ofmaterial losses.

The quantitative assessment of flood losses isinevitably uncertain (see Chorynski et al. 2012), 110

hence one can only provide broad ranges of esti-mates of material damage. Indeed, compiling a list ofthe most destructive floods in a rigorous quantitativemanner is a problematic task. Nevertheless, Table 1provides a sample, listing the six most destructive 115

floods (in terms of material damage) in Europe, allof which occurred in the last 50 years.

Another unique and useful, source of informationon floods in recent decades is the Dartmouth FloodObservatory, which includes an “Active Archive of 120

Large Flood Events, 1985–present. Collection ofthese data has been carried out by G. R. Brakenridgeand co-workers, first at Dartmouth College and thenat the University of Colorado, both in the USA.This database differs from others in that it is dedi- 125

cated to floods only, provides global coverage, andis matched to a large amount of satellite imagery ofmany of the events. The data are freely available fromthe Observatory’s web site (http://floodobservatory.colorado.edu). 130

The Observatory uses both news reports andorbital remote sensing to detect floods, and it usesremote sensing in particular to measure and map

Table 1 The six floods in Europe with the greatest (inflation-adjusted) material damage. See Chorynski et al. (2012) forsources of information.

No Flood beginning Country Inflation- adjusteddamage (million US$)

Number offatalities

1 2002-08-01 Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy,Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Ukraine,Hungary, Moldova

27 115 232

2 1994-11-04 Italy 5 944–14 238 64–833 1966-11-04 Italy 14 005 70–1184 2000-10-13 Italy, France, Switzerland 11 199 13–385 1983-08-25 Spain 2 847–8 623 40–456 1997-07-01 Poland, Czech Repussssblic, Germany 2 744–8 340 100–118

Large floods in Europe, 1985–2009 3

surface water changes associated with identified inun-dation events. The event listing (the archive of “large”135

floods) provides a first-order characterization of allknown events, from 1985 to the present. Now thatmore than 25 years of data are available, it is possi-ble to examine changes in large flood characteristics(including severity and magnitude) in Europe for this140

time interval. Europe is a large geographic region; infact rare events occur on individual river reaches (e.g.the 100-year flood at a gauging station) somewhere inEurope fairly frequently. Thus a large total number ofevents is available for study and analysis.145

In order to compare individual flood events,and as part of standard flood reporting for theObservatory’s Archive, Brakenridge proposed twoindices characterizing floods—flood severity andflood magnitude (the latter being a function of flood150

severity, duration, and inundated area). Three floodseverity classes were defined as follows. Severityclass 1 includes large flood events (often caus-ing significant human and economic damage); withan estimated (commonly from news reports) mean155

return period (recurrence interval, or average intervalbetween two events with magnitude equal to orgreater than the level concerned) of the order of10–20 years. Severity class 1.5 contains very largeevents whose return period is greater than 20 years160

but less than 100 years. Finally, severity class2 includes truly extreme events, with an estimatedreturn period (recurrence interval) equal to or greaterthan 100 years. Hence, severity is a discrete index,similar to the decimal logarithm of the mean return165

period (recurrence interval). It is not an exact descrip-tive statistic, but only an orientation method to allowuse of expert judgments and also translation ofnews reports such as “largest flood in 50 years”,or “as large as the flood of 2002” into approxi-170

mate numerical estimates of how unusual the flooddischarge was.

Although severity, as defined above, is an impor-tant flood characteristic, it does not include othercritical aspects of flooding. How widespread was175

the flood event? And how long did it last? Verywidespread flooding persisting over long periods oftime is a larger hydrological event than, for example, asevere flash flood that affects only one small drainagebasin. Thus, a second statistic is needed, and “flood180

magnitude” is defined as:

Flood Magnitude = log10 (Duration × Severity

× Affected Area)(1)

where duration is in days, severity is 1, 1.5, or 2, andaffected area (geographic area affected by reportedflooding, not inundation area) is in km2. Flood magni-tude expressed as a nonlinear descriptive indicator is 185

designed to mimic the Richter Scale for earthquakes,so that, as the overall area in which severe floodingincreases, the scale can reach 7, 8 and 9 to representtruly large magnitude events. This strategy providesa continuous metric, instead of artificially binning 190

floods into discrete classes such as large, very large,etc. The severity, affected area and duration of theevent clearly are all important components in under-standing “how big” a particular event was. Note that,while “inundated area” might appear a more precise 195

metric than “affected area”, some floods encompassvery large regions, with small and large watershedsalike affected by high water. The affected area met-ric draws a kind of “envelope curve” (geographically)around the lands affected by precipitation surplus and 200

flooding streams and rivers, and it can be extended tomany past events. The technology is only now emerg-ing, via remote sensing, to accurately measure on aregional basis the land area actually inundated.

The numbers of large floods above a certain mag- 205

nitude threshold can be used to study changes overtime. As defined, these metrics refer to floods ashydrological phenomena, not directly related to socio-economic effects. Severity is a measure of how rareor unusual the event is, while the magnitude of a rain- 210

caused flood (depending on severity, duration of floodand its areal extent) may approximate the overall masstransfer of atmospheric water to the ground during the“event”, however such is defined.

A weak point of examining the overall num- 215

ber of floods above a certain magnitude thresh-old is that events adjacent to each other in timecould be subjectively either grouped, as one event,or counted separately, as two. If treated together,they may constitute a super flood. If treated sepa- 220

rately, they may constitute two smaller floods of lowermagnitude. Decisions on treating adjacent eventsshould be made as objectively as possible, but evenseparation of adjacent flood discharge hydrographscan be difficult when analysing streamflow records. 225

Fortunately, the news-based source of much of theFlood Observatory Archive information commonlycreates natural boundaries around events: damaging,rare flooding attracts abundant news reports, whichfollow the event as it increases to maximum severity 230

and extent, and the daily news coverage declines asthe flood wave begins to recede. Then two alternativesoccur: (a) a new input of water initiates new flooding

4 Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz et al.

and media coverage, even while the previous event isstill being reported, or (b) media attention drops to235

zero or very near zero, soon after which a new eventis reported. These alternatives provide a useful guideto the heuristic “lump or split” decision. Note also thatflooding commonly occurs upstream first and thenmoves downstream. The event begins at upstream240

locations, and extends through time until flooding hasreceded at even the downstream locations.

Pinskwar et al. (2012) compiled counts of largefloods in consecutive 5-year intervals and presentedorientation maps of changing numbers of large245

floods in such intervals for Europe. Figure 1 illus-trates the spatial distribution of the number of largefloods (for which severity is greater than or equalto 1.5), in Europe, over the entire 25-year timeinterval, 1985–2009, for which records are available250

in the Flood Observatory database. In the period1985–2009, some areas of Europe were visited byup to nine large floods. The countries with mul-tiple large floods during 1985–2009 are: Romania,Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, UK, Germany and255

Austria (Fig. 1), of which Romania was affected mostfrequently.

ARE EUROPEAN RIVER FLOW REGIMESCHANGING?

Over the last 50 years, heavy precipitation events 260

have been increasing in frequency over most extra-tropical regions, at the continental and global scales(cf. Groisman et al. 2005, Trenberth et al. 2007).This includes widespread increases in the contribu-tion to total annual precipitation from very wet days 265

(days in which precipitation amounts exceed the 95thpercentile value) in many land regions. This corre-sponds to an observed significant increase in watervapour amount in the warmer atmosphere. However,the rainfall statistics are strongly influenced by inter- 270

annual and inter-decadal variability. There are prob-lems with data availability in general, and also withdata homogeneity and accuracy. As noted by Zolina(2012), intense precipitation in Europe exhibits com-plex variability and lacks a robust spatial pattern. 275

The changes in heavy precipitation are inconsistentacross studies, and are region- and season-specific.However, the dominating tendency (for many regions,using several indices) is that heavy precipitation hasbeen increasing. In many regions (e.g. central-western 280

Europe and European Russia), increasing trends in

Fig. 1 Spatial distribution of the number of large floods in Europe, based on records of the Flood Observatory over the entire25-year time interval, 1985–2009, for which records are available (cf. Pinskwar et al. 2012). The threshold for classificationof large floods is severity equal to or larger than 1.5.

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Large floods in Europe, 1985–2009 5

high percentiles of daily winter precipitation werefound, but in some regions trends were decreasing.Also the structure of precipitation has changed—alarger fraction of total precipitation comes in the form285

of prolonged wet spells as opposed to shorter rainevents. As stated by Zolina (2012), short isolatedrain events have been regrouped into prolonged wetspells. We note that the assumption of “stationarity”in streamflow records, upon which traditional flood290

risk evaluation is based, conflicts with the results ofsuch studies. Thus, one cannot assume that flood fre-quency and magnitude statistics have remained or willremain unvarying over time (Milly et al. 2008).

There have been several attempts to seek robust295

trends in European high river discharges, but theresults so far are not conclusive. The results ofa global change detection study of annual maxi-mum river flows (Kundzewicz et al. 2005, Svenssonet al. 2005) do not support the hypothesis of a300

ubiquitous increase in annual maximum river flows.There are also many other aspects of potential non-stationarity: for example, Lins and Slack (1999)describe streamflow trends in the conterminous USAas “getting wetter but less extreme”.305

According to Wilby et al. (2008), detection ofpersisting climate change even at global or regionalscales is inherently difficult because of the low signal-to-noise ratio. The climate change signal is super-imposed on a strong inter-annual and interdecadal310

variability in both rainfall and river discharge (the lat-ter of which is further affected by land-use change andriver regulation). Hence, Wilby et al. (2008) speculatethat statistically robust trends are unlikely to be foundfor several decades even if change is occurring.315

The controversy regarding the question ofwhether or not floods have been more frequent isespecially apparent in the context of future flood risk.Several model scenarios of future climate indicate alikelihood of increased intense precipitation and flood320

hazard, with more severe hydrological extremes beingassociated with a warmer climate (cf. Kundzewiczet al. 2008). On the grounds of physics (Clausius-Clapeyron law), there is indeed enhanced potentialfor intense precipitation in the warmer atmosphere325

(cf. Trenberth 1999, Trenberth et al. 2007). Severalresearchers, such as Palmer and Räisänen (2002) andChristensen and Christensen (2003), report projec-tions of more intense precipitation with consequencesfor flooding in the future, warmer climate. Model-330

based projections for the future (e.g. Milly et al.2002, Lehner et al. 2006, Dankers and Feyen 2008,Hirabayashi et al. 2008) show a clear increase in flood

hazard over large areas. There is a lack of agreement,however, between the results of observations from the 335

past to the present, and the results of model projec-tions for the future. The former show no ubiquitousupward trend in flood maxima, while the latter dopredict upward changes. The failure to detect a ubiq-uitous rising trend in floods has been a surprise to 340

some experts describing recent flood events as possi-ble harbingers of a rise in flood risk related to climatechange. This is exemplified by Schiermeier (2003):“Analysis pours cold water on flood theory”, an arti-cle referring to negative results of trend detection by 345

Mudelsee et al. (2003).Despite the above, a regional change in the tim-

ing and nature of floods has been observed in manyareas of Europe. For instance, less frequent snowmeltand ice-jam-related floods have been recorded, cf. 350

Kundzewicz (2002, p. 237): “It was reported frommuch of Europe that ... less snow cover may reducethe severity of spring snowmelt floods ... It seems that,where the rivers freeze, milder winters lead gener-ally to thinner ice cover and shorter persistence and 355

reduce severity of ice jams. Ice-jam related floods arenot a major problem anymore in much of Europe,where the rivers freeze less often in the warming cli-mate (with industrial waste heat playing also a rolein many locations).” Mudelsee et al. (2003) found 360

significant downward trends in floods during win-ter (November–April) in two major rivers (Elbe andOder) in Central Europe.

TEMPORAL CHANGES IN LARGE FLOODFREQUENCY 365

The availability of 25 years of large flood recordsin the Dartmouth Flood Observatory Archive allowsanalysis of the time series of flood indices overthe continent. Examining the material available, onecan analyse the temporal changes of numbers of 370

floods above fixed thresholds of severity or magni-tude. Figure 2 illustrates the numbers of large floodsin each individual year since 1985. Two definitions of“large floods” are considered here: (a) flood eventswhose severity is greater than or equal to 1.5, and (b) 375

those whose magnitude is greater than or equal to 5.Figure 2 clearly demonstrates that, for both defi-

nitions of large floods, according to available records,the numbers of large flood events during the 25-yearperiod 1985–2009, increased. 380

However, notwithstanding the clear rising trends,considerable variability is superimposed. For exam-ple, in the flood-rich years 1997 and 1998, the number

6 Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz et al.

Fig. 2 Numbers of large floods of severity ≥1.5 and/or magnitude ≥5 in Europe each year during 1985–2009, based onDartmouth Flood Observatory records.

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of large floods (magnitude ≥5) in Europe equalled11 and 12, respectively, while in a flood-poor year,385

such as 2000, this number was only 4. Also, muchcaution is needed in inferring long-term changes,because the series is not entirely homogeneous: it ispossible that less media-based information was avail-able in the early days of the database, 1985–1989.390

Other workers and the Flood Observatory archivalreference information also discuss this likely bias.However, most large events do trigger a consider-able number of media reports; some events may stillhave been missed, particularly early in the record, but,395

due to the high cut-off threshold, most severe andhigh-magnitude events in each year are likely to haveentered the archive.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Time series of large flood event information collected400

in the Dartmouth Flood Observatory records provideone data source for illustrating their spatio-temporalvariability. The sample of 25 annual numbers is smallin a statistical sense (when used to describe eventpatterning whose recurrence intervals may exceed405

100 years), yet it offers useful insight. It will beinstructive to look into future years of record toexamine what trend the extending time series follows.

Although many studies of longer time series offlood records have recently been reported for lim-410

ited areas of Europe, e.g. Lindström and Bergström(2004), Macdonald and Black (2010), Brázdil et al.(2011a, 2011b); Hänggi and Weingartner (2011),Villarini et al. (2011), and Wetter et al. (2011), andfor much of North America (Villarini et al. 2009,415

Hirsch and Ryberg 2012), they do not cover the floodmetrics considered in the present paper. Moreover,

long time series (observations cum historical data)present a range of problems too. The advantage of theapproach used here, harnessing the Dartmouth Flood 420

Observatory records, is a broad spatial coverage of theEuropean continent.

This paper looks at two indices of flood events:flood severity (related to flood frequency) andflood magnitude (related to flood severity, duration 425

and inundated area). Direct factors responsible forchanges in flood severity and magnitude could resultfrom climate change, but watershed surface changesand river engineering can also play a role. There isno direct link to socio-economic characteristics such 430

as material damage potential, or monetary damageamount, whose reason for increase with time is wellknown, cf. anthropopressure and human encroach-ment into unsafe areas (Di Baldassare et al. 2010,Koutsoyiannis 2011). Only indirect links between 435

flood severity/magnitude and socio-economic indicescan be envisaged, via flood-risk reduction activities,land-use change and land-cover change.

A robust and ubiquitous trend in maximum riverflow, or any other geophysical flood indicator has not 440

yet been found in the available literature. Hence, therationale for the present analysis, where an increas-ing trend seems to be suggested by the number ofreported floods exceeding defined thresholds of twoflood metrics. 445

Acknowledgements The contributions of ZWK andIP were supported by the project PSPB no. 153/2010,FLOod RISk on the northern foothills of the TatraMountains (FLORIST), supported by a grant fromSwitzerland through the Swiss Contribution to the 450

enlarged European Union. The authors acknowledge

Large floods in Europe, 1985–2009 7

the constructive remarks by two anonymous ref-erees, one eponymous referee—Dr Giuliano DiBaldassare—and Professor Demetris Koutsoyiannis,Co-Editor of HSJ , that helped to improve the paper.455

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