Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Climate impact on floods: changes in high flows in Sweden in the past and the future (1911-2100)
SMHI, Research Department, Hydrology.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8314-0735
SMHI, Research Department, Hydrology.
2015 (English)In: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, ISSN 1027-5606, E-ISSN 1607-7938, Vol. 19, no 2, p. 771-784Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Resource type
Text
Abstract [en]

There is an ongoing discussion whether floods occur more frequently today than in the past, and whether they will increase in number and magnitude in the future. To explore this issue in Sweden, we merged observed time series for the past century from 69 gauging sites throughout the country (450 000 km(2)) with high-resolution dynamic model projections of the upcoming century. The results show that the changes in annual maximum daily flows in Sweden oscillate between dry and wet periods but exhibit no significant trend over the past 100 years. Temperature was found to be the strongest climate driver of changes in river high flows, which are related primarily to snowmelt in Sweden. Annual daily high flows may decrease by on average -1% per decade in the future, mainly due to lower peaks from snowmelt in the spring (-2% per decade) as a result of higher temperatures and a shorter snow season. In contrast, autumn flows may increase by + 3% per decade due to more intense rainfall. This indicates a shift in floodgenerating processes in the future, with greater influence of rain-fed floods. Changes in climate may have a more significant impact on some specific rivers than on the average for the whole country. Our results suggest that the temporal pattern in future daily high flow in some catchments will shift in time, with spring floods in the northern-central part of Sweden occurring about 1 month earlier than today. High flows in the southern part of the country may become more frequent. Moreover, the current boundary between snow-driven floods in northern-central Sweden and rain-driven floods in the south may move toward higher latitudes due to less snow accumulation in the south and at low altitudes. The findings also indicate a tendency in observations toward the modeled projections for timing of daily high flows over the last 25 years. Uncertainties related to both the observed data and the complex model chain of climate impact assessments in hydrology are discussed.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2015. Vol. 19, no 2, p. 771-784
National Category
Oceanography, Hydrology and Water Resources
Research subject
Hydrology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:smhi:diva-2008DOI: 10.5194/hess-19-771-2015ISI: 000350557400008OAI: oai:DiVA.org:smhi-2008DiVA, id: diva2:919149
Available from: 2016-04-13 Created: 2016-03-03 Last updated: 2018-01-10Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(3970 kB)577 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 3970 kBChecksum SHA-512
d62b22a10b7900e4ea552b773ad6e7d4879ab2f3732736dadc9d6fa72c65952f1bb09a28dcb4c4f2c59f422c2434bed110ab4b2dd921686980a3b618c8f66881
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full text

Authority records

Arheimer, BeritLindström, Göran

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Arheimer, BeritLindström, Göran
By organisation
Hydrology
In the same journal
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
Oceanography, Hydrology and Water Resources

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 578 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 1315 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf