RT Journal Article
T1 On the relationship between atmospheric rivers, weather types and floods in Galicia (NW Spain)
A1 Eiras Barca, Jorge
A1 Lorenzo, Nieves
A1 Taboada, Juan
A1 Robles, Alba
A1 Míguez Macho, Gonzalo
AB Atmospheric rivers (ARs) – long and narrow structures of anomalously high water vapor flux located in the warm sector of extratropical cyclones – have been shown to be closely related to extreme precipitation and flooding. In this paper we analyze the connection between ARs and flooding in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia under a variety of synoptic conditions represented by the so-called “weather types”, a classification of daily sea-level pressure patterns obtained by means of a simple scheme that adopts the subjective procedure of Lamb. Flood events are identified from official reports conducted by the Spanish emergency management agency (Protección Civil) from 1979 to 2010. Our results suggest that, although most flood events in Galicia do not coincide with the presence of an overhead AR, ARs are present in the majority of severe cases, particularly in coastal areas. Flood events associated with ARs are connected to cyclonic weather types with westerly and southwesterly flows, which occur mostly in winter months. The link between ARs and severe flooding is not very apparent in inland areas or during summer months, in which case heavy precipitation is usually not frontal in nature but rather convective. Nevertheless, our results show that, in general, the amount of precipitation in flood events in Galicia more than doubles when an AR is present
PB Copernicus Publications
SN 1561-8633
YR 2018
FD 2018
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22055
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22055
LA eng
NO Eiras-Barca, J., Lorenzo, N., Taboada, J., Robles, A., and Miguez-Macho, G.: On the relationship between atmospheric rivers, weather types and floods in Galicia (NW Spain), Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 18, 1633–1645, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1633-2018, 2018
NO The authors acknowledge fruitful discussions with Swen Brands and MeteoGalicia. Jorge Eiras-Barca is funded by the “Ministerio Español de Economía y Competitividad” and FEDER (EDRF) (CGL2013-45932-R). This work was partially supported by Xunta de Galicia under project “gts0005 ED431C 2017/64-GRC” Programa de Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas (Grupos de Referencia Competitiva)
DS Minerva
RD 24 abr 2026