Compound flood events: analysing the joint occurrence of extreme river discharge events and storm surges in northern and central Europe

Heinrich, Philipp; Hagemann, Stefan; Weisse, Ralf; Schrum, Corinna; Daewel, Ute; Gaslikova, Lidia

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-1967-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-1967-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-1967-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 5

Research article

|

31 May 2023

Research article |

| 31 May 2023

Compound flood events: analysing the joint occurrence of extreme river discharge events and storm surges in northern and central Europe

Philipp Heinrich, Stefan Hagemann, Ralf Weisse, Corinna Schrum, Ute Daewel, and Lidia Gaslikova

Data sets

Forcing for HD Model from HydroPy and subsequent HD Model river runoff over Europe based on EOBS22 and ERA5 data S. Hagemann and T. Stacke https://doi.org/10.26050/WDCC/EOBS_ERA5-River_Runoff

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach, B. Bell, P. Berrisford, G. Biavati, A. Horányi, J. Muñoz Sabater, J. Nicolas, C. Peubey, R. Radu, I. Rozum, D. Schepers, A. Simmons, C. Soci, D. Dee, and J.-N. Thépaut https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

Großwetterlagenklassifikation DWD https://www.dwd.de/DE/leistungen/grosswetterlage/grosswetterlage.html

Short summary

High seawater levels co-occurring with high river discharges have the potential to cause destructive flooding. For the past decades, the number of such compound events was larger than expected by pure chance for most of the west-facing coasts in Europe. Additionally rivers with smaller catchments showed higher numbers. In most cases, such events were associated with a large-scale weather pattern characterized by westerly winds and strong rainfall.