Increasing hourly heavy rainfall in Austria reflected in flood changes

Klaus Haslinger (), Korbinian Breinl, Lovrenc Pavlin, Georg Pistotnik, Miriam Bertola, Marc Olefs, Marion Greilinger, Wolfgang Schöner and Günter Blöschl
Additional contact information
Klaus Haslinger: GeoSphere Austria – Federal Agency for Geology, Geophysics, Climatology and Meteorology
Korbinian Breinl: Federal Ministry Republic of Austria for Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management
Lovrenc Pavlin: Federal Ministry Republic of Austria for Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management
Georg Pistotnik: GeoSphere Austria – Federal Agency for Geology, Geophysics, Climatology and Meteorology
Miriam Bertola: Vienna University of Technology
Marc Olefs: GeoSphere Austria – Federal Agency for Geology, Geophysics, Climatology and Meteorology
Marion Greilinger: GeoSphere Austria – Federal Agency for Geology, Geophysics, Climatology and Meteorology
Wolfgang Schöner: University of Graz
Günter Blöschl: Vienna University of Technology

Nature, 2025, vol. 639, issue 8055, 667-672

Abstract: Abstract Climate change is expected to increase heavy rainfall with concomitant increases in flooding1. Causes of increased heavy rainfall include the higher water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere and changes in atmospheric circulation patterns2, which may translate into future heavy rainfall increases in most of Europe3. However, gathering evidence on the time evolution of past changes has been hampered by data limitations and measurement uncertainties, in particular for short rainfall durations, such as 1 h. Here we show an 8% increase in daily and 15% increase in hourly heavy rainfall over the last four decades by analysing a new dataset comprising 883 stations in Austria from 1900 to 2023. These increases are fully consistent between two independent networks and occurred after a retarding phase between 1960 and 1980. Hourly heavy rainfall changes are aligned with temperature increases with the sensitivity of a 7% increase per 1 °C of warming, in line with Clausius–Clapeyron scaling. Daily heavy rainfall changes, however, are aligned with atmospheric circulation indices with little correlation to air temperature, which suggests a bigger role of atmospheric circulation modes than previously thought. The daily heavy rainfall changes are remarkably consistent with observed flood increases of about 8% in large catchments. The hourly heavy rainfall changes are similarly consistent with flood changes in small catchments, although the flood increase is stronger (25% over the last four decades). Climate adaptation measures in flood management may therefore be more pressing for rivers draining smaller catchment areas than for large rivers.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08647-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:639:y:2025:i:8055:d:10.1038_s41586-025-08647-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08647-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().