TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ganguli, Poulomi
A1  - Paprotny, Dominik
A1  - Hasan, Mehedi
A1  - Güntner, Andreas
A1  - Merz, Bruno
T1  - Projected changes in compound flood hazard from riverine and coastal floods in northwestern Europe
JF  - Earth's future
N2  - Compound flooding in coastal regions, that is, the simultaneous or successive occurrence of high sea levels and high river flows, is expected to increase in a warmer world. To date, however, there is no robust evidence on projected changes in compound flooding for northwestern Europe. We combine projected storm surges and river floods with probabilistic, localized relative sea-level rise (SLR) scenarios to assess the future compound flood hazard over northwestern coastal Europe in the high (RCP8.5) emission scenario. We use high-resolution, dynamically downscaled regional climate models (RCM) to drive a storm surge model and a hydrological model, and analyze the joint occurrence of high coastal water levels and associated river peaks in a multivariate copula-based approach. The RCM-forced multimodel mean reasonably represents the observed spatial pattern of the dependence strength between annual maxima surge and peak river discharge, although substantial discrepancies exist between observed and simulated dependence strength. All models overestimate the dependence strength, possibly due to limitations in model parameterizations. This bias affects compound flood hazard estimates and requires further investigation. While our results suggest decreasing compound flood hazard over the majority of sites by 2050s (2040-2069) compared to the reference period (1985-2005), an increase in projected compound flood hazard is limited to around 34% of the sites. Further, we show the substantial role of SLR, a driver of compound floods, which has frequently been neglected. Our findings highlight the need to be aware of the limitations of the current generation of Earth system models in simulating coastal compound floods.
KW  - compound flood
KW  - storm surge
KW  - river floods
KW  - sea level rise
KW  - climate
KW  - change
KW  - Europe
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001752
SN  - 2328-4277
VL  - 8
IS  - 11
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken, NJ
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ganguli, Poulomi
A1  - Merz, Bruno
T1  - Trends in Compound Flooding in Northwestern Europe During 1901-2014
JF  - Geophysical research letters
N2  - We analyze trends in compound flooding resulting from high coastal water levels (HCWLs) and peak river discharge over northwestern Europe during 1901-2014. Compound peak discharge associated with 37 stream gauges with at least 70 years of record availability near the North and Baltic Sea coasts is used. Compound flooding is assessed using a newly developed index, compound hazard ratio, that compares the severity of river flooding associated with HCWL with the at-site, T-year (a flood with 1/T chance of being exceeded in any given year) fluvial peak discharge. Our findings suggest a spatially coherent pattern in the dependence between HCWL and river peaks and in compound flood magnitudes and frequency. For higher return levels, we find upward trends in compound hazard ratio frequency at midlatitudes (gauges from 47 degrees N to 60 degrees N) and downward trends along the high latitude (>60 degrees N) regions of northwestern Europe. Plain Language Summary Compound floods in delta areas, that is, the co-occurrence of high coastal water levels (HCWLs) and high river discharge, are a particular challenge for disaster management. Such events are caused by two distinct mechanisms: (1) HCWLs may affect river flows and water levels by backwater effects or by reversing the seaward flow of rivers, particularly in regions with elevation less than 10 m in northwestern Europe. (2) The correlation between HCWL and river flow peaks may also stem from a common meteorological driver. Severe storm periods may be associated with high winds leading to storm surges, and at the same time with high precipitation followed by inland flooding. Understanding the historical trends in compound flooding, owing to changes in relative sea levels, in river flooding and in the dependence between these two drivers, is essential for projecting future changes and disaster management. The risk assessment frameworks are often limited to assessing flood risk from a single driver only. We present a new approach to assess compound flood severity resulting from extreme coastal water level and peak river discharge. We find upward trends in compound flooding for midlatitude regions and downward trends for high latitudes in northwestern Europe.
KW  - compound flood
KW  - northwestern Europe
KW  - risk modeling
KW  - dependence
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL084220
SN  - 0094-8276
SN  - 1944-8007
VL  - 46
IS  - 19
SP  - 10810
EP  - 10820
PB  - American Geophysical Union
CY  - Washington
ER  -