Estimation of the long-term cyclical fluctuations of snow-rain floods in the Danube basin within Ukraine

Abstract

Floods are a periodic natural phenomenon, often accompanied by negative consequences for the local population and the economy as a whole. Therefore, knowledge of the trends of maximum flow have great practical importance, because it is the basis for planning and designing various hydraulic structures, hydrological forecasting, the mapping of flood risk, etc. In this paper, we analysed the long-term cyclical fluctuations of the maximum flow of snow-rain floods of the Danube basin within Ukraine (5 large rivers, 14 medium and 5 small). The database includes time series (34 gauging stations) of the maximum discharges of the cold period from the beginning of the observations up to 2015. The methodological approaches (developed by Gorbachova) are based on the use of hydro-genetic methods − namely the mass curve, the residual mass curve, and combined graphs. The presented results illustrate that the longterm fluctuations of the maximum flow of snow-rain floods are synchronous at all study gauging stations in the Danube basin within Ukraine, but these fluctuations are not always in the synchronous phase. We found that the maximum flow of snow-rain floods in the Danube basin within Ukraine have four types of long-term fluctuations, each with a different cycle duration.