Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere1. These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe2. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe3, because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results-arising from the most complete database of European flooding so far-suggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century4,5, suggesting that climate-driven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management.

Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Wallingford UK

CSE Control Systems Engineer Renewable Energy Systems and Technology Tirana Albania

Czech Hydrometeorological Institute Prague Czechia

Department for Catchment Hydrology Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research Halle Germany

Department of Agricultural Sciences University of Naples Federico 2 Naples Italy

Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering University of Bath Bath UK

Department of Civil Chemical Environmental and Materials Engineering Università di Bologna Bologna Italy

Department of Civil Engineering Dokuz Eylul University Izmir Turkey

Department of Civil Engineering Hydraulic Energy and Environment Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Madrid Spain

Department of Engineering University of Messina Messina Italy

Department of Engineering University Roma Tre Rome Italy

Department of Environment Land and Infrastructure Engineering Politecnico di Torino Turin Italy

Department of Geography and Planning University of Liverpool Liverpool UK

Department of Geography Faculty of Science University of Zagreb Zagreb Croatia

Department of Hydrological Research Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute Kiev Ukraine

Department of Hydrology and Hydrodynamics Institute of Geophysics Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland

Department of Land and Water Resources Management Faculty of Civil Engineering Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava Bratislava Slovakia

Department of Land Environment Agriculture and Forestry University of Padova Padua Italy

Department of Land Hydrology Lomonosov Moscow State University Moscow Russia

Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering University of Ljubljana Ljubljana Slovenia

Faculty of Civil Engineering Architecture and Geodesy Split University Split Croatia

Faculty of Geography University of Belgrade Belgrade Serbia

Finnish Environment Institute Helsinki Finland

Forecast Department European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Reading UK

Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences Potsdam Germany

Hydrometeorological Institute Odessa State Environmental University Odessa Ukraine

Institute of Environmental Engineering ETH Zurich Zurich Switzerland

Institute of Geo Sciences Energy Water and Environment Polytechnic University of Tirana Tirana Albania

Institute of Geography Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Ss Cyril and Methodius University Skopje North Macedonia

Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management Technische Universität Wien Vienna Austria

Institute of Risk and Uncertainty University of Liverpool Liverpool UK

Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units Department of Geography Maynooth University Maynooth Ireland

Irstea UR RiverLy Lyon Villeurbanne France

Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate Oslo Norway

Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute Norrköping Sweden

University of Architecture Civil Engineering and Geodesy Sofia Bulgaria

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