TY - JOUR
T1 - Multi-model ensemble projections of European river floods and high flows at 1.5, 2, and 3 degrees global warming
AU - Thober, Stephan
AU - Kumar, Rohini
AU - Wanders, Niko
AU - Marx, Andreas
AU - Pan, Ming
AU - Rakovec, Oldrich
AU - Samaniego, Luis
AU - Sheffield, Justin
AU - Wood, Eric F.
AU - Zink, Matthias
N1 - Funding Information:
This study has been mainly funded within the scope of the HOKLIM project (www.ufz.de/hoklim) by the German Ministry for Education and Research (grant number 01LS1611A). This study has been partially funded by the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts implements this service and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service on behalf of the European Commission. We would like to thank all the colleagues who contributed to the EDgE project (http://edge.climate.copernicus.eu/). We acknowledge the funding from NWO Rubicon 825.15.003. The ENSEMBLES data used in this work was funded by the EU FP6 integrated project Ensembles (contract number 505539) whose support is gratefully acknowledged. We acknowledge the EOBS dataset from the EU FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com) and the data providers in the ECA&Dproject (http://www.ecad.eu). We are also grateful to the ISIMIP project for providing the climate model data for this study. This ISIMIP project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with project funding reference number 01LS1201A. We would like to thank people from various organizations and projects for kindly providing us the data which were used in this study, which includes JRC, ESA, NASA, USGS, GRDC, BGR & UNESCO, ISRIC, EEA, EWA, and Cedex.
Funding Information:
This study has been mainly funded within the scope of the HOKLIM project (www.ufz.de/hoklim) by the German Ministry for Education and Research (grant number 01LS1611A). This study has been partially funded by the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts implements this service and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service on behalf of the European Commission. We would like to thank all the colleagues who contributed to the EDgE project (http://edge.climate.copernicus.eu/). We acknowledge the funding from NWO Rubicon 825.15.003. The ENSEMBLES data used in this work was funded by the EU FP6 integrated project Ensembles (contract number 505539) whose support is gratefully acknowledged. We acknowledge the E-OBS dataset from the EU FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com) and the data providers in the ECA&D project (http://www.ecad.eu). We are also grateful to the ISIMIP project for providing the climate model data for this study. This ISIMIP project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with project funding reference number 01LS1201A. We would like to thank people from various organizations and projects for kindly providing us the data which were used in this study, which includes JRC, ESA, NASA, USGS, GRDC, BGR & UNESCO, ISRIC, EEA, EWA, and CEDEX.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - Severe river floods often result in huge economic losses and fatalities. Since 1980, almost 1500 such events have been reported in Europe. This study investigates climate change impacts on European floods under 1.5, 2, and 3 K global warming. The impacts are assessed employing a multi-model ensemble containing three hydrologic models (HMs: mHM, Noah-MP, PCR-GLOBWB) forced by five CMIP5 general circulation models (GCMs) under three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs 2.6, 6.0, and 8.5). This multi-model ensemble is unprecedented with respect to the combination of its size (45 realisations) and its spatial resolution, which is 5 km over the entirety of Europe. Climate change impacts are quantified for high flows and flood events, represented by 10% exceedance probability and annual maxima of daily streamflow, respectively. The multi-model ensemble points to the Mediterranean region as a hotspot of changes with significant decrements in high flows from -11% at 1.5 K up to -30% at 3 K global warming mainly resulting from reduced precipitation. Small changes (< ±10%) are observed for river basins in Central Europe and the British Isles under different levels of warming. Projected higher annual precipitation increases high flows in Scandinavia, but reduced snow melt equivalent decreases flood events in this region. Neglecting uncertainties originating from internal climate variability, downscaling technique, and hydrologic model parameters, the contribution by the GCMs to the overall uncertainties of the ensemble is in general higher than that by the HMs. The latter, however, have a substantial share in the Mediterranean and Scandinavia. Adaptation measures for limiting the impacts of global warming could be similar under 1.5 K and 2 K global warming, but have to account for significantly higher changes under 3 K global warming.
AB - Severe river floods often result in huge economic losses and fatalities. Since 1980, almost 1500 such events have been reported in Europe. This study investigates climate change impacts on European floods under 1.5, 2, and 3 K global warming. The impacts are assessed employing a multi-model ensemble containing three hydrologic models (HMs: mHM, Noah-MP, PCR-GLOBWB) forced by five CMIP5 general circulation models (GCMs) under three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs 2.6, 6.0, and 8.5). This multi-model ensemble is unprecedented with respect to the combination of its size (45 realisations) and its spatial resolution, which is 5 km over the entirety of Europe. Climate change impacts are quantified for high flows and flood events, represented by 10% exceedance probability and annual maxima of daily streamflow, respectively. The multi-model ensemble points to the Mediterranean region as a hotspot of changes with significant decrements in high flows from -11% at 1.5 K up to -30% at 3 K global warming mainly resulting from reduced precipitation. Small changes (< ±10%) are observed for river basins in Central Europe and the British Isles under different levels of warming. Projected higher annual precipitation increases high flows in Scandinavia, but reduced snow melt equivalent decreases flood events in this region. Neglecting uncertainties originating from internal climate variability, downscaling technique, and hydrologic model parameters, the contribution by the GCMs to the overall uncertainties of the ensemble is in general higher than that by the HMs. The latter, however, have a substantial share in the Mediterranean and Scandinavia. Adaptation measures for limiting the impacts of global warming could be similar under 1.5 K and 2 K global warming, but have to account for significantly higher changes under 3 K global warming.
KW - 1.5 degree global warming
KW - Europe
KW - Noah-MP
KW - PCR-GLOBWB
KW - climate change
KW - floods
KW - mHM
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85041182478&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85041182478&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/aa9e35
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/aa9e35
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85041182478
SN - 1748-9326
VL - 13
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 1
M1 - 014003
ER -