Several quite severe droughts occurred in Europe in the 21st century; three of them (2003, 2012 and 2015) hit also Slovakia. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) were used for assessment of meteorological drought occurrence. The research was established on discharge time series representing twelve river basins in Slovakia within the period 1981–2015. Sequent Peak Algorithm method based on fixed threshold, three parametric Weibull and generalized extreme values distribution GEV, factor and multiple regression analyses were employed to evaluate occurrence and parameters of hydrological drought in 2003, 2011–2012 and 2015, and the relationship among the water balance components. Results showed that drought parameters in evaluated river basins of Slovakia differed in respective years, most of the basins suffered more by 2003 and 2012 drought than by the 2015 one. Water balance components analysis for the entire period 1931–2016 showed that because of contin
This work examines the main features of the flash flood regime in Central Europe as revealed by an analysis of flash floods that have occurred in Slovakia. The work is organized into the following two parts: The first part focuses on estimating the rainfall-runoff relationships for 3 major flash flood events, which were among the most severe events since 1998 and caused a loss of lives and a large amount of damage. The selected flash floods occurred on the 20th of July, 1998, in the Malá Svinka and Dubovický Creek basins; the 24th of July, 2001, at Štrbský Creek; and the 19th of June, 2004, at Turniansky Creek. The analysis aims to assess the flash flood peaks and rainfall-runoff properties by combining post-flood surveys and the application of hydrological and hydraulic post-event analyses. Next, a spatially-distributed hydrological model based on the availability of the raster information of the landscape’s topography, soil and vegetation properties, and rainfall data was used to simulate the runoff. The results from the application of the distributed hydrological model were used to analyse the consistency of the surveyed peak discharges with respect to the estimated rainfall properties and drainage basins. In the second part these data were combined with observations from flash flood events which were observed during the last 100 years and are focused on an analysis of the relationship between the flood peaks and the catchment area. The envelope curve was shown to exhibit a more pronounced decrease with the catchment size with respect to other flash flood relationships found in the Mediterranean region. The differences between the two relationships mainly reflect changes in the coverage of the storm sizes and hydrological characteristics between the two regions.