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Communities live close to rivers and therefore are confronted with the risk of flooding. It is important to understand the drivers and mechanisms of the consumption and investment behavior of these societies in order to identify an optimal investment strategy into flood defense capital. To solve such an economic optimization model we develop a periodic water function to approximate the former discrete stochastic time series of rainfall events and apply it to an existing socio-hydrology model.

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We present an application of self-organizing maps (SOMs) to downscaling weekly ensemble forecasts for probabilistic prediction of local precipitation. Downscaling weekly ensemble forecasts to local precipitation are conducted by using the obtained SOM lattice based on the WPs of the global model ensemble forecast. A probabilistic local precipitation is easily and quickly obtained from the ensemble forecast.

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Weather systems that cause floods in the Waitaki River (New Zealand) are investigated by tracing the origin and pathway of "parcels" of air associated with heavy rain. Two weather patterns are found, one causing slow moving rain systems from a sub-tropical origin; the second involving fast-moving westerly airflow. Both are strongly related to a single monthly pattern of atmospheric circulation. This is a promising new insight relevant for ongoing research on prediction of Waitaki river flow.

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A research effort involving Switzerland, Georgia and the Czech Republic has been launched to evaluate the relation between snowpack and summer low flows. Two rainfall-runoff models will simulate over 10 years of snow hydrology and runoff in nested streams. Processes involved will be also evaluated by mean by means of high frequency sampling of the environmental isotopes 18O and 2H. The paper presents first analysis of available datasets of 18O, 2H, discharge, snowpack and modelling experiments.

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Heavy ice jams during spring floods are usual on the rivers in the north of the European part of Russia. The last catastrophic flood in the area of study took place in the spring of 2013. An assessment of the probability of floods and formation of ice jams, calculations of duration and depth of flooding at various water levels, with an assessment of the corresponding economic losses in the north of Russia are considered in the current research.

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During a flood event over a karst watershed, the karst may attenuate surface floods by absorbing water or contribute to the surface flood by direct contribution of karst waters in the rivers and by diffuse resurgence along the hillslopes. If it is possible to monitor each known outlet of a karst system, the diffuse contribution is yet difficult to assess. We present here a new, original method to do it, based on chemical analysis and a hydraulic study.

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Recent climate projections suggest changes in European drought frequency, indicating increased drought risk in the south and less droughts in the north. Here we show that a similar change pattern can be identified in the observed record. The results raise the question whether observed changes in European drought frequency are a consequence of anthropogenic climate change.

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In this study, a distributed hydrologic model considering the interaction between flow routing and land surface processes was developed, and its effect on river discharge estimation was investigated. The results of this study suggest that considering hydrologic interaction in a numerical model could affect both flood and drought estimation.

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Selected series of drought-related characteristics derived from mean daily discharges measured in Czechia were tested for the presence of significant trends. Three modifications of the Mann-Kendall test were employed that account for short-term persistence and long-term persistence. One of them was utilised for the first time in hydrology. Unlike previous studies, the present study highlighted the differences among trend in deficit volumes (decrease in the west and increase in the east).

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Three hourly assimilated precipitation series with 0.1 deg. are used to analyze the features and trends of extreme precipitation in Beijing, China. The results show that: (1) the local climate and topography are two main factors influencing the spatial distributions of precipitation; (2) areas with greater precipitation threshold may have shorter precipitation days; (3) extreme precipitation amount (48% of precipitation) concentrated on urban areas and mountain area within only 5 to 7 days.

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In this paper extreme hydrological events on the rivers of European part of Russia are analysed. It is shown that they are closely related to the hydrological regime transformation answering recent climate changes. During the last twenty years the role of the occasional floods on the European part of Russia became more and more important. Number of winter floods, connected with thaws rose dramatically, in the same manner as summer flash floods.

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Spatiotemporal characteristics of extreme precipitation and temperature in Yunnan Province, China, were analyzed by using observed daily data at 28 meteorological stations from 1959-2013 in this study.Both maximum and minimum temperature showed significant increasing tendency while there was not obvious changes for precipitation.It was noted that extreme precipitation and temperature events occurred more frequently in central region where the risk of extreme climatic events was greater.

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The analysis of Ostrom’s framework for understanding Social-Ecological Systems applied in a drought-prone region of Brazil showed that deficiencies in water management cause the intensification of drought’s impacts for the water users. The reasons are more related to water management and governance problems than to drought event magnitude or climate change. This is a problem that holdup advances in dealing with extreme events.

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Results showed an intensification of extreme events in recent years in Northeastern (NE) Brazil , especially in shorter duration rainfall (less than 12 h). Hourly rainfall is bigger in almost all the NE region, but especially in littoral and Northern portion, however, 12 and 24h rainfall exhibit increases in the North, but, lower values in the Southern half of the region in concordance with flood changes reported other authors.

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Drought is a comprehensive phenomenon not only resulting from precipitation deficits and climatic factors, but also being related to terrestrial hydrologic conditions and human activities. This paper investigated the relationships among regional hydrologic drought, climate extremes and human activities in the Weihe River basin, northwest China, where is also called Guanzhong Plain.

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This paper presents a combined approach of spatial and temporal downscaling of future rainfall predicted by GCMs whereas most of the techniques in the literature are limited to spatial downscaling. This study uses rainfall data from several capital cities in Australia; Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin regions. Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM) is used for spatial downscaling and numerical model based on scaling invariant concept is used for temporal downscali

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Sierra Nevada National Park (South Spain) constitute a key monitoring point for climate variability and its impacts. This work presents the local trend analysis of weather variables at this area together with additional snow-related variables. The joint analysis of weather and snow variables showed a decrease trend in the extent and persistence of the snow covered area over the area. The precipitation regime seems to be the most relevant driver on the snow regime forcing in Mediterranean areas.

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Results show the large potential of a simple general IDF equation as Bell’s (1969) equation to describe and understand the spatial and temporal distribution of extreme hydrological events involving heavy rainfall in Southern Brazil, when associated with TRMM estimate. This is important for a region with data scarcity, especially for shorter durations rainfall

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Retrospective forensics of the 1969 extreme hydrometeorological events in Tunisia – Tunisia experienced extreme rainfall-flood events in September and October 1969. These events have been gauged and reconstituted in such a detailed manner that they are now the best known extreme events in Maghreb. The retrospective forensics of these events are much valuable not only in terms of hydrological and geomorphological knowledge, but also in terms of actual and future water and infrastructure.

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Cette étude vise à analyser les tendances des pluies extrêmes dans un bassin semi-aride du Nord de l’Algérie et leur relation avec les types de circulation atmosphérique. Les pluies totales et l’intensité journalière ont connu une baisse significative durant la période 1971-2010 montre des tandis que leur fréquence ne montre pas de changement significatif. L’oscillation méditerranéenne est le type de circulation qui influence la variabilité des pluies extrêmes du bassin du Chéliff

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