New study findings could help improve flood projections

Climate change will lead to more and stronger floods, mainly due to the increase of more intense heavy rainfall. In order to assess how exactly flood risks and the severity of floods will change over time, it is particularly helpful to consider two different types of such extreme precipitation events: weaker and stronger ones. An international group of scientists led by Dr. Manuela Brunner from the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr. Ralf Ludwig from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) have now shed light on this aspect, which has been little researched to date. They found that the weaker and at the same time more frequent extreme precipitation events (on average every 2 to 10 years) are increasing in frequency and quantity, but do not necessarily lead to flooding. In some places, climate change may even reduce the risk of flooding due to drier soils. Similarly, more severe and at the same time less frequent extreme precipitation events (on average less frequent than 50 years and as occurred in the Eifel in July 2021) are increasing in frequency and quantity, but they also generally lead to more frequent flooding. The team published the results of their study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.