A multi-disciplinary analysis of the exceptional flood event of July 2021 in central Europe. Part 1: Event description and analysis

Abstract. The July 2021 flood in central Europe was one of the five costliest natural disasters in Europe in the last half century with estimated total damage of EUR 32 billion. This study investigates the complex interactions between meteorological, hydrological, and hydro-morphological processes and mechanisms that led to the exceptional flood. Furthermore, we present our estimates of the impacts in terms of inundation areas, traffic disruptions, and economic losses. The estimation of inundation areas as well as the derived damage assessments were carried out during or directly after the flood, and show the potential of near-real-time forensic disaster analyses for crisis management, emergency personnel on-site, and the provision of relief supplies. The superposition of several factors resulted in widespread extreme precipitation totals and water levels well beyond a 100-year event: slow propagation of the low pressure system Bernd, convection embedded in a mesoscale precipitation field, unusually moist air masses associated with a significant positive anomaly in sea surface temperature over the Baltic Sea, wet soils, and steep terrain. Various hydro-morphodynamic processes as well as changes in valley morphology observed during the event exacerbated the impact of the flood. Relevant effects included, among many others, the occurrence of extreme landscape erosion, rapidly evolving erosion and scour processes in the channel network and urban space, recruitment of debris from the natural and urban landscape, deposition and clogging of bottlenecks in the channel network with eventual collapse. This study is part one of a two-paper series. The second part puts the July 2021 flood into a historical context and into the context of climate change.