A millennium-long reconstruction of damaging hydrological events across Italy.

ABSTRACT: Damaging hydrological events are extreme phenomena with potentially severe impacts on human societies. Here, we present the hitherto longest reconstruction of damaging hydrological events for Italy, and for the whole Mediterranean region, revealing 674 such events over the period 800-2017. For any given year, we established a severity index based on information in historical documentary records, facilitating the transformation of the data into a continuous time-series. Episodes of hydrological extremes disrupted ecosystems during the more severe events by changing landforms. The frequency and severity of damaging hydrological events across Italy were likely influenced by the mode of the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), with relatively few events during the warm Medieval Climate Ano

SUBMITTER: Diodato N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6620325 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature