Climate change is disrupting the rhythms of spring growing and river flooding across Europe, which could pose new problems for biodiversity and food security in floodplains, scientists say.
New analysis of five decades of European flood and temperature data, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, demonstrates for the first time an increasing overlap between the onset of spring and the highest points of seasonal flooding.
Researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and Umeå University in Sweden performed a detailed analysis of data collected since the 1960s on flood peaks and daily temperature in locations across Europe.
They found the thermal growing season – defined as periods where the temperature rose consistently above 5°C, encouraging plants and trees to begin to grow – has been consistently starting earlier in the year, bringing it closer to the periods where the highest river floods occur, which have begun to happen later in the year in Central and Eastern Europe.
Dr Thorsten Balke, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, is the paper’s lead author.
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