Temporal changes in the frequency of flood types and their impact on flood statistics

Abstract

Standard flood frequency analysis assumes stationarity of flood conditions, i.e., no change of the distribution over time. However, long-term variability in climate and anthropogenic impacts question this assumption. Consequently, more and more non-stationary models are considered in flood frequency analyses. Yet, most of them only consider a change-point or trend in the magnitude of flood peaks while ignoring changes in the underlying flood geneses. Recent climate reports suggest such a change in frequency of certain flood-generating factors, e.g., the increase of frequency of heavy-rainfall events. In this study, flood types are applied to detect changes in the meteorological drivers of flood regimes. By application of a robust change-point test for the variance based on Gini’s Mean Difference, significant changes in the frequency of occurrence of certain flood types are detected. A clear tendency to more frequent heavy-rainfall floods and less snowmelt-induced floods is observed for many catchments in Central Europe. A special focus is laid on the shifts in winter floods, which occur less often and are replaced by rainfall-driven floods. The impacts of such changes on flood statistics are demonstrated by several approaches. Though the magnitude of flood peaks does not (necessarily) change, the changing frequency of floods leads to changing flood quantiles. Quantile estimations from traditional statistical analyses of annual series are compared to results of type-based flood statistics. It is shown how standard models are more affected by these changes because they are not able to compensate for changes in the frequency of individual flood types.