Increasing frequencies and changing characteristics of heavy precipitation events threatening infrastructure in Europe under climate change

Nissen, Katrin M.; Ulbrich, Uwe

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-1177-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-1177-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-17-1177-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 7

Research article

|

14 Jul 2017

Research article |

| 14 Jul 2017

Increasing frequencies and changing characteristics of heavy precipitation events threatening infrastructure in Europe under climate change

Katrin M. Nissen and Uwe Ulbrich

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Jul 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 31 Oct 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer comments on the paper "Will climate change increase the risk of infrastructure failures in Europe due to heavy precipitation?" by Katrin M. Nissen and Uwe Ulbrich', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 Nov 2016
- AC1: 'Response to Referee #1', Katrin Nissen, 20 Mar 2017
RC2: 'Review of manuscript entitled “Will climate change increase the risk of infrastructure failures in Europe due to heavy precipitation?” by, Katrin M. Nissen and Uwe Ulbrich, No.: nhess-2016-337', Anonymous Referee #2, 03 Mar 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Referee #2', Katrin Nissen, 20 Mar 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (07 Apr 2017) by Paolo Tarolli

AR by Katrin Nissen on behalf of the Authors (08 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (11 May 2017) by Paolo Tarolli

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (23 May 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (29 May 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of manuscript entitled “Increasing frequencies and changing characteristics of heavy precipitation events threatening infrastructure in Europe under climate change” by, Katrin M. Nissen and Uwe Ulbrich, No.: nhess-2016-337

In the revised version of the manuscript authors took into consideration and performed to a very large degree, the reviewers’ suggestions. Therefore, the submitted work can be published in the NHESS provided that authors consider the following comments.

Authors, under the reviewers’ suggestions, changed the title of the submitted paper with the new title being more representative of its topic. Part of the introduction, especially the additional information that has been included, clarify in one part the objectives of this work and combined with remarks of concluding section, justify why its results can be useful for infrastructure designers and providers. However, authors should make small adaptation in the abstract as well. Specifically they should rewrite the following sentence: “The risk by daily and multi-day events increases at a lower rate than the risk by sub-daily events.”. Actually it is the number of events that it is predicted to change and not necessarily the risk. However, authors can add a phrase before the last sentence, stating that the predicted changes (in frequency, size and intensity of events) may increase the risk for infrastructure damages.

In the concluding section authors should add in a few sentences that identification of heavy precipitation events is based on a novel technique developed in the frame of this study and describe very briefly the proposed approach.

Some minor comments
Page 6, line 28: in the sentence “Looking at the historical period, …” please add just after the word period the period in parenthesis (1971 – 2000)

Page 8, line 20: in the sentence “The annual cycle of the events for the sub-regions marked in Fig. 6 is depicted in Fig. 7.” please add that these seasonal variations refer to the period 2071-2100.

Page 10, lines 27-30: Authors should rewrite the following sentence “There is a consensus that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, which are associated with an increase in air temperatures will probably lead to an increase in extreme precipitation.”. I think it is more appropriate to be written as: “There is a consensus that an increase in air temperatures which is associated with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, will probably lead to an increase in extreme precipitation.”

Page 3, line 3: in the sentence “The work decribed in this paper was conducted within the EU funded research project RAIN” please write correctly the word describe

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (01 Jun 2017) by Paolo Tarolli

AR by Katrin Nissen on behalf of the Authors (01 Jun 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (02 Jun 2017) by Paolo Tarolli

Short summary

The effect of climate change on potentially infrastructure damaging heavy precipitation events in Europe is investigated. A novel technique records not only event frequency but also event size, duration and severity as these parameters determine the potential consequences of the event. Over most of Europe the frequency and size of heavy precipitation events is predicted to increase. Moreover, the most severe events are predicted for future periods.