Articles | Volume 23, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-1227-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-1227-2023
Brief communication
 | Highlight paper
 | 
29 Mar 2023
Brief communication | Highlight paper |  | 29 Mar 2023

Brief communication: On the extremeness of the July 2021 precipitation event in western Germany

Katharina Lengfeld, Paul Voit, Frank Kaspar, and Maik Heistermann

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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 egusphere-2022-979', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Nov 2022
    • AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Katharina Lengfeld, 12 Jan 2023
  • RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2022-979', Marc Schleiss, 18 Nov 2022
    • AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Katharina Lengfeld, 12 Jan 2023
  • RC3: 'Comment on egusphere-2022-979', Anonymous Referee #3, 15 Dec 2022
    • AC3: 'Reply on RC3', Katharina Lengfeld, 12 Jan 2023

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Feb 2023) by Uwe Ulbrich
AR by Katharina Lengfeld on behalf of the Authors (10 Feb 2023)  Author's response   Author's tracked changes   Manuscript 
ED: Publish as is (28 Feb 2023) by Uwe Ulbrich
AR by Katharina Lengfeld on behalf of the Authors (06 Mar 2023)
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Executive editor
Here approaches to rank precipitation events according to their hazard characteristics are presented, while their impacts depend on many other factors as well like the orography, hydrological situation, exposure and vulnerability. Determining the severity of a precipitation event is not straight forward, as it depends on both the intensity on different time scales and the spatial extent. The weather extremity index (WEI) and the cross-scale WEI (xWEI) are used to determine the extremeness of precipitation events. The devastating event in the Ahr valley in Germany in July 2021 is shown to rank No 1 or 4 for Germany, dependent on the measure used. This emphasizes that it was extreme across multiple spatial and temporal scales, and the importance of considering different scales to determine the extremeness of rainfall events.
Short summary
Estimating the severity of a rainfall event based on the damage caused is easy but highly depends on the affected region. A less biased measure for the extremeness of an event is its rarity combined with its spatial extent. In this brief communication, we investigate the sensitivity of such measures to the underlying dataset and highlight the importance of considering multiple spatial and temporal scales using the devastating rainfall event in July 2021 in central Europe as an example.
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