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Abstract:
The devastating flood that struck western Germany and surrounding areas in mid-July 2021 was considered one of the most severe natural disasters to hit Europe in the past 50 years. The purpose of this study is to estimate the frequency of the precipitation event responsible for such devastation. To attain this objective, the extremeness of the various precipitation events occurred in the last 71 years (1951-2021) was estimated utilizing the recently developed cross space-time scale weather extremity index xWEI. The calculated xWEI values were then employed to estimate the event probability using the Generalized Extreme Value distribution across Germany. The probability analysis indicates that the 2021 precipitation event, with the estimated return period exceeding 1000 years, is the most extreme event in the Ahr and Erft catchments over the specified period. However, other regions, particularly in northern Germany, have experienced even rarer extreme precipitation events with respect to the xWEI. Further, the study also assessed the capacity of the regional weather generator (RWG) used to reproduce the space-time extremity of precipitation events in terms of their frequency in Germany.
