Abstract
Landslides present a substantial geomorphological hazard in Alpine regions and there are expectations that climate change will alter their frequency and magnitude in the future. Understanding the spatial distribution and timing of landslides in the context of past change is therefore necessary if we are to assess their future behaviour. Using a regional landslide inventory for the European Alps we analyse the influence of weather types, specifically the COST733 database, on landslides. Monte Carlo permutation tests are used to assess which weather types are most likely associated with landslides. Weather types with high precipitation are consistent with more landslides, although there are also seasonal differences. Over the duration of the COST733 catalogue there has been a significant decrease in the number of days with weather types associated with low frequencies of landslides. During the spring and autumn months, the trend in observed landslide frequency and weather types are well matched. However while there is potential for weather typing to be used as a proxy for future landslide frequency, other external factors must be carefully considered.
Highlights
Landslides are a serious geomorphological hazard in many of the world’s mountain regions (Keiler et al 2010; Malet et al 2010)
To overcome issues surrounding the use of a large dataset that includes many classification methods, Brier Skill Scores were used to assess the predictive ability of each of the 5076 different classifications. 67 % of the top 100 Cooperation in Science and Technology Action 733 (COST733) classifications fell in domains centred over the European Alps and include all of the areas covered by the inventory (D06 and D07), with the remaining 33 % falling in domains which included a portion of the landslide inventory
We have demonstrated a relationship between synoptic weather and the incidence of landslides in the European Alps, and have shown that a number of weather types are related to a higher than expected number of landslides in the region
Summary
Landslides are a serious geomorphological hazard in many of the world’s mountain regions (Keiler et al 2010; Malet et al 2010). Using the ERA40 reanalysis dataset provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (Uppala et al 2005), the European Cooperation in Science and Technology Action 733 (COST733) provides a classification catalogue for synoptic weather in Europe (from September 1957 to August 2002; Philipp et al 2010) Using this catalogue alongside the landslide inventory for the European Alps (Wood et al 2015), the temporal and spatial distribution of landslides and historical trends in weather types are analysed. Given that weather typing has been shown to be an appropriate downscaling tool for climate models (Conway and Jones 1998), we hope that this research will help to pave the way to assessing future landslide hazard in the region through the use of future climate scenarios
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