Influence of meteorological factors on rockfall occurrence in a middle mountain limestone cliff

D'Amato, Julie; Hantz, Didier; Guerin, Antoine; Jaboyedoff, Michel; Baillet, Laurent; Mariscal, Armand

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-719-2016

Articles | Volume 16, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-719-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-16-719-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 3

Research article

|

15 Mar 2016

Research article |

| 15 Mar 2016

Influence of meteorological factors on rockfall occurrence in a middle mountain limestone cliff

Julie D'Amato, Didier Hantz, Antoine Guerin, Michel Jaboyedoff, Laurent Baillet, and Armand Mariscal

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Mar 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 21 Dec 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C2938: 'Comments', Jordi Corominas, 11 Jan 2016
- AC C3201: 'Response to Jordi Corominas', Didier Hantz, 11 Feb 2016
RC C2965: 'general', Rainer Poisel, 13 Jan 2016
- AC C3205: 'Response to Rainer Poisel', Didier Hantz, 11 Feb 2016

Short summary

The influence of meteorological conditions on rockfall occurrence has been often highlighted, but quantitative analyses are rare. A near-continuous survey of a limestone cliff has shown that the rockfall frequency can be multiplied by 7 during freeze-thaw episodes and 26 when the mean rainfall intensity (since the beginning of the rainfall episode) is higher than 5 mm h⁻¹. Based on these results, a three-level scale has been proposed for predicting the temporal variations of rockfall frequency.