Multiscale modelling of rainstorm-induced historical intermediate floods (June–November) in the Rhone River Basin

Nazzareno Diodato and Gianni Bellocchi ()

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2013, vol. 65, issue 3, 1465-1479

Abstract: This study reveals the changes and evolution of rainstorm-driven intermediate floods occurring and driving multiple damaging hydrological events in the Rhone River Basin (RRB), since 1500 until 2010. A parsimonious approach was developed to simulate the major hydroclimatological flood-producing forcing, the Multiscale Rainstorm Climate Model (STORMCLIMM). We collected the frequency of intermediate floods—a type of particularly hazardous floods commonly taking place between June and beginning of November—from the RCB to be compared to STORMCLIMM estimates. The latter, smoothed by a moving window of 21 years, results in a high-pass filter in the time domain, which magnifies the signal of forcing variations causing intermediate floods. The RRB showed large temporal variations in both extreme rainstorms and associated multidecadal intermediate-floods (MUDIF) frequency at different climatic periods and land-use systems through historical times. An important peak was observed in the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715 AD). The model allowed detecting MUDIF occurred in the historical times. The situation becomes interesting with respect to recent times, because the Rhone landscape looks more vulnerable in the last decades as a consequence of land-use changes and climate shift towards more erratic and intensive storms. This evidence suggests that the interactions of land-use and climatic changes may turn into considerable vulnerability to fluvial flooding and agro-ecosystem connected to them for upcoming years. The Rhone, for example, provides basis for use of hydrological indicators (such as the one represented by STORMCLIMM) for one site or region and which, through minor modifications, can be made relevant to specific needs. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords: Intermediate floods; Maunder Minimum (MM); Multidecadal intermediate floods (MUDIF); Rhone River Basin (RRB); Multiscale Rainstorm Climate Model (STORMCLIMM) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-012-0419-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:nathaz:v:65:y:2013:i:3:p:1465-1479

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-012-0419-7

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().