Analyses of seasonal and annual maximum daily discharge records for central Europe

Summary Annual and seasonal maximum daily discharge time series for 55 stations in central Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) are used to examine flood frequency from a regional perspective. In this study we examine temporal nonstationarities in the flood peak records, and characterize upper tail and scaling properties of the flood peak distributions. There is a marked seasonality in the flood peak record, with a large fraction of annual maximum flood peaks occurring during the winter in the western part of the study domain, and during the summer in the southern portion of this region. The presence of abrupt and slowly varying changes in the flood time series is examined by means of non-parametric tests. Change-points in the mean and variance of the flood peak distributions are examined using the Pettitt test, while the presence of monotonic patterns is examined by means of Spearman and Mann-Kendall tests. Abrupt changes, rather than monotonic trends are responsible for violations of the stationarity assumption. These step changes can often be associated with anthropogenic effects, such as construction of dams and reservoirs and river training. Given the profound changes that these catchments have undergone, it is difficult to detect a possible climate change signal in the flood peak record. The estimates of the location, scale, and shape parameters of the Generalized Extreme Value distribution are used to examine the upper tail and scaling properties of the flood peak distributions. The location and scale parameters exhibit a power law behaviour when plotted as a function of drainage area, while the shape parameter decreases log-linearly for increasing catchment area. The findings of this study suggest that these records exhibit a heavy tail behaviour.

[1]  W. May,et al.  Enhanced resolution modelling study on anthropogenic climate change: changes in extremes of the hydrological cycle , 2002 .

[2]  K. Potter.  Annual precipitation in the northeast United States: Long memory, short memory, or no memory? , 1979 .

[3]  Bernard Bobée,et al.  Bayesian change-point analysis in hydrometeorological time series. Part 2. Comparison of change-point models and forecasting , 2000 .

[4]  B. Soden,et al.  Robust Responses of the Hydrological Cycle to Global Warming , 2006 .

[5]  Bernard Bobée,et al.  On the tails of extreme event distributions in hydrology , 2008 .

[6]  Robert Lund,et al.  A Review and Comparison of Changepoint Detection Techniques for Climate Data , 2007 .

[7]  Peter Hall,et al.  Nonparametric Analysis of Temporal Trend When Fitting Parametric Models to Extreme­Value Data , 2000 .

[8]  L. Feyen,et al.  Flood hazard in Europe in an ensemble of regional climate scenarios , 2009 .

[9]  Hoffmann Lucien,et al.  Topography and recent winter rainfall regime change in temperate Western European areas: a case study in the Rhine‐Meuse basin , 2006 .

[10]  J. Dutoit.  The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , 2007 .

[11]  R. McCuen.  Modeling Hydrologic Change: Statistical Methods , 2002 .

[12]  S. Resnick.  Heavy-Tail Phenomena: Probabilistic and Statistical Modeling , 2006 .

[13]  A. Pettitt.  A Non‐Parametric Approach to the Change‐Point Problem , 1979 .

[14]  D. Helsel,et al.  Statistical methods in water resources , 2020, Techniques and Methods.

[15]  Anthony C. Davison,et al.  Local models for exploratory analysis of hydrological extremes , 2002 .

[16]  Markus Disse,et al.  Flood Events in the Rhine Basin: Genesis, Influences and Mitigation , 2001 .

[17]  Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz,et al.  Change detection in hydrological records—a review of the methodology / Revue méthodologique de la détection de changements dans les chroniques hydrologiques , 2004 .

[18]  D. Cox,et al.  SOME QUICK SIGN TESTS FOR TREND IN LOCATION AND DISPERSION , 1955 .

[19]  Steven R. Hare,et al.  Empirical evidence for North Pacific regime shifts in 1977 and 1989 , 2000 .

[20]  Malcolm R Leadbetter,et al.  Extremes and local dependence in stationary sequences , 1983 .

[21]  T. A. Buishand,et al.  Tests for detecting a shift in the mean of hydrological time series , 1984 .

[22]  Uwe Müller.  Flood protection with dams and flood control reservoirs—before and after the extreme flood event of August 2002, Saxony , 2008 .

[23]  Hans von Storch,et al.  Monte Carlo experiments on the effect of serial correlation on the Mann-Kendall test of trend , 1992 .

[24]  P. Pekárová,et al.  Long-term trends and runoff fluctuations of European rivers , 2006 .

[25]  Flood Forecasting for the River Inn , 2009 .

[26]  R. Katz,et al.  Extreme events in a changing climate: Variability is more important than averages , 1992 .

[27]  R. Beverton,et al.  Institute of Hydrology , 1972, Nature.

[28]  Taha B. M. J. Ouarda,et al.  Recursion‐based multiple changepoint detection in multiple linear regression and application to river streamflows , 2007 .

[29]  Bernard Bobée,et al.  Frequency analysis of a sequence of dependent and/or non-stationary hydro-meteorological observations: a review , 2006 .

[30]  David B. Stephenson,et al.  Simple nonparametric techniques for exploring changing probability distributions of weather , 2005 .

[31]  Bruno Merz,et al.  Aspects of seasonality and flood generating circulation patterns in a mountainous catchment in south-eastern Germany , 2007 .

[32]  Yuehua Wu,et al.  Penalized Maximal t Test for Detecting Undocumented Mean Change in Climate Data Series , 2007 .

[33]  A. Bronstert,et al.  Climate change, land use change and runoff prediction in the Rhine–Meuse basins , 2004 .

[34]  N. Matalas.  Stochastic Hydrology in the Context of Climate Change , 1997 .

[35]  J. Gurtz,et al.  The hydrologic impact of land cover changes and hydropower stations in the Alpine Rhine basin , 2005 .

[36]  G. Villarini,et al.  On the stationarity of annual flood peaks in the continental United States during the 20th century , 2009 .

[37]  Maciej Radziejewski,et al.  Trend detection in river flow series: 1. Annual maximum flow / Détection de tendance dans des séries de débit fluvial: 1. Débit maximum annuel , 2005 .

[38]  G. Villarini,et al.  The hydrology and hydrometeorology of flooding in the Delaware River basin. , 2010 .

[39]  Bruno Merz,et al.  At what scales do climate variability and land cover change impact on flooding and low flows? , 2007 .

[40]  S. Coles,et al.  An Introduction to Statistical Modeling of Extreme Values , 2001 .

[41]  Uwe Grünewald,et al.  Flood Risk in Central Europe , 2003, Science.

[42]  J. Kwadijk,et al.  Impact of Climate Change on Hydrological Regimes and Water Resources Management in the Rhine Basin , 2001 .

[43]  Renzo Rosso,et al.  Applied Statistics for Civil and Environmental Engineers , 2008 .

[44]  Remko Uijlenhoet,et al.  Changes in Streamflow Dynamics in the Rhine Basin under Three High-Resolution Regional Climate Scenarios , 2010 .

[45]  Taha B. M. J. Ouarda,et al.  Intercomparison of homogenization techniques for precipitation data continued: Comparison of two recent Bayesian change point models , 2009 .

[46]  Paul J. Northrop,et al.  Likelihood-based approaches to flood frequency estimation , 2004 .

[47]  J. Smith,et al.  Stochastic modeling of flood peaks using the generalized extreme value distribution , 2002 .

[48]  Ann M. Hess,et al.  Linear trend analysis: a comparison of methods , 2001 .

[49]  G. Villarini,et al.  Flood peak distributions for the eastern United States , 2009 .

[50]  Jery R. Stedinger,et al.  Appraisal of regional and index flood quantile estimators , 1995 .

[51]  Khaled H. Hamed.  Enhancing the effectiveness of prewhitening in trend analysis of hydrologic data , 2009 .

[52]  C. Schär,et al.  Climate dynamics and extreme precipitation and flood events in Central Europe , 2000 .

[53]  Timothy A. Cohn,et al.  Nature's style: Naturally trendy , 2005 .

[54]  Conleth Cunnane,et al.  Review of Statistical Models for Flood Frequency Estimation , 1987 .

[55]  P. Naveau,et al.  Statistical analysis of floods in Bohemia (Czech Republic) since 1825 , 2006 .

[56]  Bettina Schaefli,et al.  Assessment of climate‐change impacts on alpine discharge regimes with climate model uncertainty , 2006 .

[57]  Vijay P. Singh,et al.  Hydrologic Frequency Modeling , 1987 .

[58]  P. Claps,et al.  Global warming increases flood risk in mountainous areas , 2009 .

[59]  L. Bouwer,et al.  Regional sensitivities of mean and peak river discharge to climate variability in Europe , 2008 .

[60]  A. V. Vecchia,et al.  Global pattern of trends in streamflow and water availability in a changing climate , 2005, Nature.

[61]  H. Engel,et al.  Comparison of river training measures in the Rhine—catchment and their effects on flood behaviour , 2001 .

[62]  Robert Lund,et al.  Detection of Undocumented Changepoints: A Revision of the Two-Phase Regression Model , 2002 .

[63]  H. Engel.  The flood events of 1993/1994 and 1995 in the Rhine River basin , 1997 .

[64]  András Bárdossy,et al.  Detection of climate change in Europe by analyzing European atmospheric circulation patterns from 1881 to 1989 , 1990 .

[65]  Francis W. Zwiers,et al.  An Introduction to Trends in Extreme Weather and Climate Events: Observations, Socioeconomic Impacts, Terrestrial Ecological Impacts, and Model Projections* , 2000 .

[66]  David R. Brillinger,et al.  Time Series: Data Analysis and Theory. , 1982 .

[67]  S. Yue,et al.  Power of the Mann–Kendall and Spearman's rho tests for detecting monotonic trends in hydrological series , 2002 .

[68]  Joseph H. Wlosinski,et al.  Trends in flood stages: Contrasting results from the Mississippi and Rhine River systems , 2006 .

[69]  Francesco Serinaldi,et al.  Assessing the applicability of fractional order statistics for computing confidence intervals for extreme quantiles , 2009 .

[70]  M. Mudelsee,et al.  No upward trends in the occurrence of extreme floods in central Europe , 2003, Nature.

[71]  P. Bates,et al.  Flood frequency analysis for nonstationary annual peak records in an urban drainage basin , 2009 .

[72]  Gunnar Hoefer,et al.  Flood magnification on the River Rhine , 2006 .

[73]  H. Caspary.  Recent winter floods in Germany caused by changes in the atmospheric circulation across Europe , 1995 .

[74]  Anastasios A. Tsonis,et al.  Has the climate recently shifted? , 2009 .

[75]  S. Yue,et al.  The Mann-Kendall Test Modified by Effective Sample Size to Detect Trend in Serially Correlated Hydrological Series , 2004 .

[76]  F. Laio.  Cramer–von Mises and Anderson‐Darling goodness of fit tests for extreme value distributions with unknown parameters , 2004 .

[77]  Heidi Kreibich,et al.  Coping with floods in the city of Dresden, Germany , 2009 .

[78]  B. Merz,et al.  Trends in flood magnitude, frequency and seasonality in Germany in the period 1951–2002 , 2009 .

[79]  Upmanu Lall,et al.  Spatial scaling in a changing climate: A hierarchical bayesian model for non-stationary multi-site annual maximum and monthly streamflow , 2010 .

[80]  C. Schär,et al.  Detection Probability of Trends in Rare Events: Theory and Application to Heavy Precipitation in the Alpine Region , 2001 .

[81]  J. Barredo.  Normalised flood losses in Europe: 1970-2006 , 2009 .

[82]  Janusz Dominik,et al.  Evolution of the Upper Rhone River discharge and suspended sediment load during the last 80 years and some implications for Lake Geneva , 2000, Aquatic Sciences.

[83]  J. Overpeck,et al.  Abrupt Climate Change , 2003, Science.

[84]  Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts,et al.  Simulating low‐probability peak discharges for the Rhine basin using resampled climate modeling data , 2010 .

[85]  Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz,et al.  Trend detection in river flow series: 2. Flood and low-flow index series / Détection de tendance dans des séries de débit fluvial: 2. Séries d'indices de crue et d'étiage , 2005 .

[86]  Z. Kundzewicz,et al.  Summer Floods in Central Europe – Climate Change Track? , 2005 .

[87]  R. R. van der Ploeg,et al.  Elbe river flood peaks and postwar agricultural land use in East Germany , 2001, Naturwissenschaften.

[88]  Axel Bronstert,et al.  A review of the impact of land consolidation on runoff production and flooding in Germany , 1995 .

[89]  B. Merz,et al.  Changes in the flood hazard in Germany through changing frequency and persistence of circulation patterns , 2009 .

[90]  S. Rodionov.  A sequential algorithm for testing climate regime shifts , 2004 .

[91]  Khaled H. Hamed.  Exact Distribution of the Mann-Kendall Trend Test Statistic for Persistent Data , 2009 .

[92]  C. Nilsson,et al.  Fragmentation and Flow Regulation of River Systems in the Northern Third of the World , 1994, Science.

[93]  Michel Lang,et al.  The flood probability distribution tail: how heavy is it? , 2008 .

[94]  J. David,et al.  Studies of the impact of forests on peak flows and baseflows: a European perspective , 2003 .

[95]  W. Cleveland.  Robust Locally Weighted Regression and Smoothing Scatterplots , 1979 .

[96]  J. Christensen,et al.  Climate modelling: Severe summertime flooding in Europe , 2003, Nature.

[97]  James H. Lambert,et al.  Risk of Extreme Events Under Nonstationary Conditions , 1998 .

[98]  J. Stedinger,et al.  Generalized maximum‐likelihood generalized extreme‐value quantile estimators for hydrologic data , 2000 .

[99]  K. Potter.  Illustration of a New Test for Detecting a Shift in Mean in Precipitation Series , 1981 .

[100]  M. Parlange,et al.  Statistics of extremes in hydrology , 2002 .

[101]  Jürgen Ihringer,et al.  Statistical analysis of the flood situation and assessment of the impact of diking measures along the Elbe (Labe) river , 2002 .

[102]  J. Hosking.  L‐Moments: Analysis and Estimation of Distributions Using Linear Combinations of Order Statistics , 1990 .

[103]  M. Kendall,et al.  Rank Correlation Methods , 1949 .

[104]  Rüdiger Glaser,et al.  Links between flood events in central Europe since AD 1500 and large‐scale atmospheric circulation modes , 2003 .

[105]  Engineering impacts on river channels in the River Rhine catchment , 2005 .

[106]  Athanasios Kehagias,et al.  Fast segmentation algorithms for long hydrometeorological time series , 2008 .

[107]  Arko Lucieer,et al.  Assessing the effects of land use changes on floods in the meuse and oder catchment , 2001 .

[108]  G. Villarini,et al.  Nonstationary modeling of a long record of rainfall and temperature over Rome , 2010 .

[109]  Hannelore Weck-Hannemann,et al.  Sustainable Natural Hazard Management in Alpine Environments , 2009 .

[110]  Murugesu Sivapalan,et al.  Transcending limitations of stationarity and the return period: process‐based approach to flood estimation and risk assessment , 2009 .

[111]  Witold F. Krajewski,et al.  Examining Flood Frequency Distributions in the Midwest U.S. 1 , 2011 .

[112]  R. Stouffer,et al.  Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? , 2008, Science.

[113]  Luc Feyen,et al.  Climate change impact on flood hazard in Europe: An assessment based on high-resolution climate simulations , 2008 .

[114]  J. Kwadijk,et al.  The impact of climate change on the river rhine: A scenario study , 1995 .

[115]  Felix Naef,et al.  Changes in flood frequencies in Switzerland since 1500 , 2010 .

[116]  H. B. Mann.  Nonparametric Tests Against Trend , 1945 .

[117]  A. Philipp,et al.  Atmospheric circulation dynamics linked with prominent discharge events in Central Europe , 2006 .

[118]  Annegret H. Thieken,et al.  Seasonality of floods in Germany , 2009 .

[119]  Felix Naef,et al.  More frequent flooding? Changes in flood frequency in Switzerland since 1850 , 2010 .

[120]  P.H.A.J.M. van Gelder,et al.  Detection of changes in streamflow series in western Europe over 1901–2000 , 2005 .

[121]  S. Yue,et al.  Canadian streamflow trend detection: impacts of serial and cross-correlation , 2003 .

[122]  H. Buiteveld,et al.  Impact of river training and retention measures on flood peaks along the Rhine , 2002 .

[123]  Günter Blöschl,et al.  Climate change impacts—throwing the dice? , 2009 .

[124]  Peter Molnar,et al.  Streamflow trends in Switzerland , 2005 .

[125]  Kenneth W. Potter,et al.  Evidence for nonstationarity as a physical explanation of the Hurst Phenomenon , 1976 .

[126]  Gerd Tetzlaff,et al.  Extreme floods in central Europe over the past 500 years: Role of cyclone pathway ''Zugstrasse Vb'' , 2004 .

[127]  R. Tomozeiu,et al.  Winter precipitation variability and large-scale circulation patterns in Romania , 2005 .

[128]  D. Moorhead,et al.  Increasing risk of great floods in a changing climate , 2002, Nature.

[129]  Demetris Koutsoyiannis,et al.  Nonstationarity versus scaling in hydrology , 2006 .