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Hydrology

Blame the river not the rain

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The devastating intensity of exceptional floods in some rivers can be anticipated, and surprisingly traces back to the river basins themselves, rather than the amount of rain they receive.

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Fig. 1: Flooding in Kordel, Germany, on the 15th of July 2021.

dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo

Change history

  • 03 April 2023

    In the version of this article initially published, the caption describing the picture of flooding in Kordel, Germany on 15 July 2021 was missing the month, as is now amended in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Correspondence to Cédric H. David.

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David, C.H., Frasson, R.P.d.M. Blame the river not the rain. Nat. Geosci. 16, 282–283 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01163-w

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