Extreme, large-scale river floods typically affect more than one river basin. Although such trans-basin floods are highly relevant for national disaster risk reduction and insurance, the knowledge about the processes triggering these extremes is very limited. The project aims to quantitatively understand the generation and impact of trans-basin floods, and how they are linked to climate change and variability. It will analyse large-scale floods in Central Europe for the observational period 1950-today and future periods (2030-2060, 2070-2100) under climate change. A model cascade, representing the processes from the large-scale atmospheric situations through the catchment and river processes to the damage, will provide ensembles of trans-basin floods, based on changes in the frequency and persistence of weather patterns and pattern internal trends in temperature and precipitation. The project will pinpoint major changes in weather conditions resulting in distribution changes of flood characteristics and related impact.

FLOOD project is part of the research network ClimXtreme on climate change and extreme events funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the framework programme Research for Sustainable Development (FONA3)