Quantifying damage contributions from convective and stratiform weather types: How well do precipitation and discharge data indicate the risk?

Furthermore, risk assessments often focus on rare extremes, but also more frequent hydro-meteorological events burden private and public budgets. Here synoptic, hydrological, meteorological, and socio-economic data are merged to analyse 25 years of damage claims in 480 Austrian municipalities.

Exceedance probabilities of discharge and precipitation associated with damage reports are calculated and compared for convective and stratiform weather patterns. During April to November, 60% of claims are reported under convective conditions. Irrespective of the weather type, most of the accumulated cost links to minor hazard levels, not only indicating that frequent events are a highly relevant expense factor, but also pointing to deficiencies in observational data.