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. Historians and historical climatologists have long pointed to an increasedflood frequency in central Europe in the mid- and late 19th century.However, the causes have remained unclear. Here, we investigate the changesin flood frequency in Switzerland based on long time series of discharge andlake levels, precipitation, and weather types and based on climate modelsimulations, focusing on the warm season. Annual series of peak discharge ormaximum lake level, in agreement with previous studies, display increasedfrequency of floods in the mid-19th century and decreased frequency afterthe Second World War. Annual series of warm-season mean precipitation andhigh percentiles of 3 d precipitation totals (partly) reflect thesechanges. A daily weather type classification since 1763 is used to constructflood probability indices for the catchments of the Rhine in Basel and theoutflow of Lake Lugano, Ponte Tresa. The indices indicate an increasedfrequency of flood-prone weather types in the mid-19th century and adecreased frequency in the post-war period, consistent with a climatereconstruction that shows increased (decreased) cyclonic flow over westernEurope in the former (latter) period. To assess the driving factors of thedetected circulation changes, we analyze weather types and precipitation ina large ensemble of atmospheric model simulations driven with observedsea-surface temperatures. In the simulations, we do not find an increase inflood-prone weather types in the Rhine catchment in the 19th century but adecrease in the post-war period that could have been related to sea-surfacetemperature anomalies.

Causes of increased flood frequency in central Europe in the 19th century