Identification

Title

Proneness of European catchments to multiyear streamflow droughts

Abstract

Droughts can have severe ecological, social, and economic impacts. Some impacts are particularly severe if droughts last longer than 1 year and water stores are not fully replenished. The proneness of European catchments to multiyear droughts has not been studied extensively, even though such events pose a great challenge for water resources management in many regions. In this study, we assess regions and catchments in Europe that might be prone to multiyear droughts by stochastically simulating long discharge records. The simulation approach uses phase randomization and the flexible, four-parameter kappa distribution to generate potential realizations of (long) drought events. Both observed and stochastically simulated series are used to identify multiyear drought events. Catchments prone to multiyear droughts are located in southern France, central Europe, and southwestern England. To assess potential future changes in the proneness to multiyear events, we follow a purely empirical approach. We link the proneness of a catchment to multiyear events to its low-flow regime as described by the seasonality ratio. Our results show that catchments with a melt-dominated flow regime are generally not affected by multiyear droughts, whereas many catchments with a rainfall-dominated flow regime show such proneness. We further find that catchments experiencing regime changes toward a rainfall-dominated flow regime might be more affected by multiyear droughts in the future. Overall, four regions stood out that might potentially become more affected in the future if historical trends in regimes continue: southeastern England, southeastern France, central Norway, and the Pre-Alps.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d71j9f33

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact