There are concerns that recent climate change is altering the frequency and magnitude of river floods in an unprecedented way1. Historical studies have identified flood-rich periods in the past half millennium in various regions of Europe2. However, because of the low temporal resolution of existing datasets and the relatively low number of series, it has remained unclear whether Europe is currently in a flood-rich period from a long-term perspective. Here we analyse how recent decades compare with the flood history of Europe, using a new database composed of more than 100 high-resolution (sub-annual) historical flood series based on documentary evidence covering all major regions of Europe. We show that the past three decades were among the most flood-rich periods in Europe in the past 500 years, and that this period differs from other flood-rich periods in terms of its extent, air temperatures and flood seasonality. We identified nine flood-rich periods and associated regions. Among the periods richest in floods are 1560-1580 (western and central Europe), 1760-1800 (most of Europe), 1840-1870 (western and southern Europe) and 1990-2016 (western and central Europe). In most parts of Europe, previous flood-rich periods occurred during cooler-than-usual phases, but the current flood-rich period has been much warmer. Flood seasonality is also more pronounced in the recent period. For example, during previous flood and interflood periods, 41 per cent and 42 per cent of central European floods occurred in summer, respectively, compared with 55 per cent of floods in the recent period. The exceptional nature of the present-day flood-rich period calls for process-based tools for flood-risk assessment that capture the physical mechanisms involved, and management strategies that can incorporate the recent changes in risk.

ACTHYS Diffusion Grenoble France

Centre for Flood and Drought Modelling Institute of Meteorology and Water Management National Research Institute Warsaw Poland

Centre for Poland's Climate Monitoring Institute of Meteorology and Water Management National Research Institute Cracow Poland

Climate Research Department Central Institute of Meteorology and Geodynamics Vienna Austria

Czech Hydrometeorological Institute Prague Czech Republic

Department of Applied Physics University of Barcelona Barcelona Spain

Department of Chemistry and Physics University of Almería Almería Spain

Department of Economic History and International Relations Stockholm University Stockholm Sweden

Department of Economic Social and Environmental History Institute of History University of Bern Bern Switzerland

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

Department of Geography and Planning School of Environmental Sciences University of Liverpool Liverpool UK

Department of Geography University of Barcelona Barcelona Spain

Department of Geology National Museum of Natural Sciences CSIC Madrid Spain

Department of History and Archaeology University of Barcelona Barcelona Spain

Department of History Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Zagreb Zagreb Croatia

Department of History Political and International Studies University of Porto Porto Portugal

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

Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim Norway

Department of Physical Geography University of Freiburg Freiburg Germany

Department of Physical Geography Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands

Faculty of Arts University of Porto Porto Portugal

Global Change Research Institute Czech Academy of Sciences Brno Czech Republic

Hydrology Division Federal Office for the Environment Bern Switzerland

Institute of Geography Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

Institute of Geography Russian Academy of Sciences Moscow Russia

Institute of Geography University of Augsburg Augsburg Germany

Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management Vienna University of Technology Vienna Austria

Kleio Studio Associate Research Company Padua Italy

Lomonosov Moscow State University Moscow Russia

National Research Council Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate Padua Italy

Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate Oslo Norway

Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium Brussels Belgium

Transdisciplinary Research Centre Culture Space and Memory University of Porto Porto Portugal

VRVis Research Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization Vienna Austria

Comment In

Nature. 2020 Jul;583(7817):522-524. doi: 10.1038/d41586-020-02138-2. PubMed

See more in PubMed

IPCC. Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (eds Field, C. B. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012).

Glaser, R. et al. The variability of European floods since AD 1500. Clim. Change 101, 235–256 (2010).

UNDRR. Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (Geneva, 2019).

Blöschl, G. et al. Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods. Nature 573, 108–111 (2019). PubMed PMC

Camuffo, D. & Enzi, S. in Climatic Variations and Forcing Mechanisms of the Last 2000 Years (eds Jones, P. et al.) 433–450 (Springer, 1996).

Brázdil, R. et al. Fluctuations of floods of the River Morava (Czech Republic) in the 1691–2009 period: interactions of natural and anthropogenic factors. Hydrol. Sci. J. 56, 468–485 (2011).

Schmocker-Fackel, P. & Naef, F. Changes in flood frequencies in Switzerland since 1500. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 14, 1581–1594 (2010).

Pichard, G., Arnaud-Fassetta, G., Moron, V. & Roucaute, E. Hydro-climatology of the Lower Rhône Valley: historical flood reconstruction (AD 1300–2000) based on documentary and instrumental sources. Hydrol. Sci. J. 62, 1772–1795 (2017).

Wilhelm, B., Vogel, H., Crouzet, C., Etienne, D. & Anselmetti, F. S. Frequency and intensity of palaeofloods at the interface of Atlantic and Mediterranean climate domains. Clim. Past 12, 299–316 (2016).

Wirth, S. B., Glur, L., Gilli, A. & Anselmetti, F. S. Holocene flood frequency across the Central Alps—solar forcing and evidence for variations in North Atlantic atmospheric circulation. Quat. Sci. Rev. 80, 112–128 (2013).

Schulte, L. et al. Integration of multi-archive datasets for the development of a four-dimensional paleoflood model of alpine catchments. Global Planet. Change 180, 66–88 (2019).

Retsö, D. Documentary evidence of historical floods and extreme rainfall events in Sweden 1400–1800. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 19, 1307–1323 (2015).

Glur, L. et al. Frequent floods in the European Alps coincide with cooler periods of the past 2500 years. Nat. Sci. Rep. 3, 2770 (2013).

Dobrovolný, P. et al. Monthly and seasonal temperature reconstructions for central Europe derived from documentary evidence and instrumental records since AD 1500. Clim. Change 101, 69–107 (2010).

Pfister, C. The ‘Disaster Gap’ of the 20th century and the loss of traditional disaster memory. Gaia 18, 239–246 (2009).

Nicolussi, K., Joerin, U. E., Kaiser, K. F., Patzelt, G. & Thurner, A. in Global Change in Mountain Regions (ed. Price, M. F.) 59–60 (Duncow Sapiens, 2006).

Glaser, R. Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas: 1200 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen (Darmstadt Primus, 2013), 94.

Barriendos Vallve, M. & Martin-Vide, J. Secular climatic oscillations as indicated by catastrophic floods in the Spanish Mediterranean coastal area (14th–19th centuries). Clim. Change 38, 473–491 (1998).

McNally, L. K. Reconstruction of late 18th century upper-air circulation using forensic synoptic analysis. Hist. Meteorol. 2, 105–122 (2005).

Cornes, R. C., Jones, P. D., Briffa, K. R. & Osborn, T. J. Estimates of the North Atlantic Oscillation back to 1692 using a Paris–London westerly index. Int. J. Climatol. 33, 228–248 (2013).

Slonosky, V. C., Jones, P. D. & Davies, T. D. Variability of the surface atmospheric circulation over Europe, 1774–1995. Int. J. Climatol. 20, 1875–1897 (2000).

Ogilvie, A. E. J. in Climate Since A.D. 1500 (eds Bradley, R. S. & Jones, P. D.) 92–117 (Routledge, 1992).

Brázdil, R. et al. European floods of the winter 1783/84: scenarios of an extreme event during the ‘Little Ice Age’. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 100, 163–189 (2010).

Woollings, T., Hannachi, A. & Hoskins, B. Variability of the North Atlantic eddy-driven jet stream. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 136, 856–868 (2010).

Gagen, M. et al. North Atlantic summer storm tracks over Europe dominated by internal variability over the past millennium. Nat. Geosci. 9, 630–635 (2016).

Hurrell, J. W. & Van Loon, H. in Climatic Change at High Elevation Sites (eds Diaz, H. F. et al.) 69–94 (Springer, 1997).

Nobre, G. G., Jongman, B., Aerts, J. C. J. H. & Ward, P. J. The role of climate variability in extreme floods in Europe. Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 084012 (2017).

Steirou, E., Gerlitz, L., Apel, H., Sun, X. & Merz, B. Climate influences on flood probabilities across Europe. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 23, 1305–1322 (2019).

Folland, C. K. et al. The summer North Atlantic Oscillation: past, present, and future. J. Clim. 22, 1082–1103 (2009).

Raible, C., Messmer, M. B., Lehner, F., Stocker, T. & Blender, R. Extratropical cyclone statistics during the last millennium and the 21st century. Clim. Past 14, 1499–1514 (2018).

Komma, J., Blöschl, G. & Reszler, C. Soil moisture updating by ensemble Kalman filtering in real-time flood forecasting. J. Hydrol. 357, 228–242 (2008).

Grillakis, M. G. et al. Initial soil moisture effects on flash flood generation—a comparison between basins of contrasting hydro-climatic conditions. J. Hydrol. 541, 206–217 (2016).

Blöschl, G., Nester, T., Komma, J., Parajka, J. & Perdigao, R. A. P. The June 2013 flood in the Upper Danube Basin, and comparisons with the 2002, 1954 and 1899 floods. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 17, 5197–5212 (2013).

Markonis, Y., Hanel, M., Máca, P., Kyselý, J. & Cook, E. R. Persistent multi-scale fluctuations shift European hydroclimate to its millennial boundaries. Nat. Commun. 9, 1767 (2018). PubMed PMC

Sutton, R. T. & Dong, B. Atlantic Ocean influence on a shift in European climate in the 1990s. Nat. Geosci. 5, 788–792 (2012).

Hofstätter, M. & Blöschl, G. Vb cyclones synchronized with the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation. J. Geophys. Res. D 124, 3259–3278 (2019).

Hofstätter, M., Lexer, A., Homan, M. & Blöschl, G. Large-scale heavy precipitation over central Europe and the role of atmospheric cyclone track types. Int. J. Clim 38, e497–e517 (2018).

Messmer, M., Gómez-Navarro, J. J. & Raible, C. C. Climatology of Vb cyclones, physical mechanisms and their impact on extreme precipitation over central Europe. Earth Syst. Dynam. 6, 541–553 (2015).

Hawcroft, M., Walsh, E., Hodges, K. & Zappa, G. Significantly increased extreme precipitation expected in Europe and North America from extratropical cyclones. Environ. Res. Lett. 13, 124006 (2018).

Blöschl, G. et al. Changing climate shifts timing of European floods. Science 357, 588–590 (2017).

Berghuijs, W. R., Harrigan, S., Molnar, P., Slater, L. J. & Kirchner, J. W. The relative importance of different flood-generating mechanisms across Europe. Wat. Resour. Res. 55, 4582–4593 (2019).

Xoplaki, E., Gonzalez-Rouco, J. F., Luterbacher, J. & Wanner, H. Wet season Mediterranean precipitation variability: influence of large-scale dynamics and trends. Clim. Dyn. 23, 63–78 (2004).

Barrera-Escoda, A. & Llasat, M. C. Evolving flood patterns in a Mediterranean region (1301–2012) and climatic factors—the case of Catalonia. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 19, 465–483 (2015).

Barriendos, M. & Rodrigo, F. S. Study of historical flood events on Spanish rivers, using documentary data. Hydrol. Sci. J. 51, 765–783 (2006).

Valdés-Manzanilla, A. Historical floods in Tabasco and Chiapas during sixteenth–twentieth centuries. Nat. Hazards 80, 1563–1577 (2016).

Prieto, M. R. ENSO signals in South America: rains and floods in the Paraná River region during colonial times. Clim. Change 83, 39–54 (2007).

Tong, J., Quiang, Z., Deming, Z. & Yijin, W. Yangtze floods and droughts (China) and teleconnections with ENSO activities (1470–2003). Quat. Int. 144, 29–37 (2006).

Merz, B., Vorogushyn, S., Lall, U., Viglione, A. & Blöschl, G. Charting unknown waters—on the role of surprise in flood risk assessment and management. Wat. Resour. Res. 51, 6399–6416 (2015).

Brázdil, R. et al. in Changes in Flood Risk in Europe (ed. Kundzewicz, Z. W.) 121–166 (CRC, 2012).

Sturm, K. et al. Floods in central Europe since AD 1500 and their relation to the atmospheric circulation. Petermanns Geogr. Mitt. 145, 14–23 (2001).

Salinas, J.L., Kiss, A., Viglione, Viertl, R. & Blöschl. G. A fuzzy Bayesian approach to flood frequency estimation with imprecise historical information. Wat. Resour. Res. 52, 6730–6750 (2016).

Kiss, A. Floods and Long-Term Water-Level Changes in Medieval Hungary, 280–285 (Springer, 2019).

Viglione, A. et al. Attribution of regional flood changes based on scaling fingerprints. Wat. Resour. Res. 52, 5322–5340 (2016).

Hall, J. et al. Understanding flood regime changes in Europe: a state of the art assessment. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 18, 2735–2772 (2014).

Rogger, M. et al. Land-use change impacts on floods at the catchment scale—challenges and opportunities for future research. Wat. Resour. Res. 53, 5209–5219 (2017).

Rohr, C. Extreme Naturereignisse im Ostalpenraum. Naturerfahrung im Spätmittelalter und am Beginn der Neuzeit, 558–562 (Köln Böhlau, 2007).

Skøien, J. & Blöschl, G. Catchments as space-time filters—a joint spatio-temporal geostatistical analysis of runoff and precipitation. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 10, 645–662 (2006).

Haslinger, K. & Blöschl, G. Space-time patterns of meteorological drought events in the European Greater Alpine Region over the past 210 years. Wat. Resour. Res. 53, 9807–9823 (2017).

Prohom, M., Barriendos, M. & Sanchez-Lorenzo, A. Reconstruction and homogenization of the longest instrumental precipitation series in the Iberian Peninsula (Barcelona, 1786–2014). Int. J. Climatol. 36, 3072–3087 (2016).

Parker, D. E. & Horton, E. B. Uncertainties in the central England temperature series since 1878 and some changes to the maximum and minimum series. Int. J. Climatol. 25, 1173–1188 (2005).

Moberg, A., Bergström, H., Ruiz Krigsman, J. & Svanered, O. Daily air temperature and pressure series for Stockholm (1756–1998). Clim. Change 53, 171–212 (2002).

Hall, J. & Blöschl, G. Spatial patterns and characteristics of flood seasonality in Europe. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 22, 3883–3901 (2018).

Nezhikovskij, R. A. Reka Neva I Nevskaja Guba, 81–84 (Leningrad Gidrometeoizdat, 1981).

Mudelsee, M., Deutsch, M., Börngen, M. & Tetzlaff, G. Trends in flood risk of the River Werra (Germany) over the past 500 years. Hydrol. Sci. J. 51, 818–833 (2006).

Coeur, D. La plaine de Grenoble face aux inondations (Versailles Quae, 2008).

Increasing volatility of reconstructed Morava River warm-season flow, Czech Republic

Sustainable cultivation of the white truffle (Tuber magnatum) requires ecological understanding

Shifts in flood generation processes exacerbate regional flood anomalies in Europe