Long-term properties of annual maximum daily river discharge worldwide

http://itia.ntua.gr/getfile/1128/2/documents/2011EGU_DailyDischargeMaxima_Pres.pdf

European Geosciences Union on Hydrological change versus climate change:

"Conclusions

The World Catalogue of Maximum Observed Floods (Herschy, 2003) and its supplementary documentation, provide a good basis for assessing flood trends worldwide.

Analysis of trends and of aggregated time series on climatic (30-year) scale does not indicate consistent trends worldwide. Despite common perception, in general, the detected trends are more negative (less intense floods in most recent years) than positive. Similarly, Svensson et al. (2005) and Di Baldassarre et al. (2010) did not find systematical change neither in flood increasing or decreasing numbers nor change in flood magnitudes in their analysis.

Future work will try to investigate the reasons for the decreasing trends at each of the basins, with particular emphasis on whether the river basins upstream the gauging location are intact or perhaps affected by human activities."


The more things change, the more they stay the same...

to get their number, they should note that some major streams, like the Colorado, no longer reach the sea.