ALBERT

Description: Different spatial extents of heavy precipitation events can lead to flash floods or river floods that generally cause greater loss of life or property, respectively. In the past, there have been plenty of studies on physical mechanisms leading to rainfall extremes and how climate change affects these events. Using a long-term European high-resolution gridded precipitation observation based on gauged network data from 1950, we investigate how the frequency, intensity, duration, areal extent, and total accumulated rainfall volume associated with the most intensive daily precipitation events change over time. We first identify all the heavy precipitation incidents with an event tracking algorithm. Different thresholds are used to define heavy rainfall events and test the sensitivity of the result to extreme event definitions. After archiving all the extreme rainfall events, it is possible to make a ranking for all the historical events by total accumulated rainfall volume. We also find from the event archive that the frequency and total volume of extreme rainfall events have increased significantly in Europe since 1950. The main contribution to the volume increase is the larger spatial extent in recent decades. We will discuss the implication of the potential change in flash and river flood events as a function of the warming. With the information on the spatial and temporal evolution of extreme events, it's also possible to further study the associated weather system and environmental conditions that fueled the precipitation extremes.