TY  - GEN
A1  - Rottler, Erwin
A1  - Francke, Till
A1  - Bürger, Gerd
A1  - Bronstert, Axel
T1  - Long-term changes in central European river discharge for 1869–2016
BT  - Impact of changing snow covers, reservoir constructions and an intensified hydrological cycle
T2  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2  - Recent climatic changes have the potential to severely alter river runoff, particularly in snow-dominated river basins. Effects of changing snow covers superimpose with changes in precipitation and anthropogenic modifications of the watershed and river network. In the attempt to identify and disentangle long-term effects of different mechanisms, we employ a set of analytical tools to extract long-term changes in river runoff at high resolution. We combine quantile sampling with moving average trend statistics and empirical mode decomposition and apply these tools to discharge data recorded along rivers with nival, pluvial and mixed flow regimes as well as temperature and precipitation data covering the time frame 1869-2016. With a focus on central Europe, we analyse the long-term impact of snow cover and precipitation changes along with their interaction with reservoir constructions.

Our results show that runoff seasonality of snow-dominated rivers decreases. Runoff increases in winter and spring, while discharge decreases in summer and at the beginning of autumn. We attribute this redistribution of annual flow mainly to reservoir constructions in the Alpine ridge. During the course of the last century, large fractions of the Alpine rivers were dammed to produce hydropower. In recent decades, runoff changes induced by reservoir constructions seem to overlap with changes in snow cover. We suggest that Alpine signals propagate downstream and affect runoff far outside the Alpine area in river segments with mixed flow regimes. Furthermore, our results hint at more (intense) rain-fall in recent decades. Detected increases in high discharge can be traced back to corresponding changes in precipitation.
T3  - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1412 
KW  - empirical mode decomposition
KW  - atmospheric blocking
KW  - heavy precipitation
KW  - streamflow trends
KW  - climate-change
KW  - rhine basin
KW  - time-series
KW  - events
KW  - Switzerland
KW  - variability
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517763
SN  - 1866-8372
IS  - 4
ER  -