Relationship among moisture flux anomalies, extreme precipitation, and floods in central Europe

Floods associated with extreme precipitation are one of the most serious natural hazards, which produce substantial human and socio-economic losses in central Europe. One way to reduce the impact of flooding is by increasing preparedness with better flood forecasts and warnings, which is not possible without a proper understanding of physical processes leading to a flood hazard. However, frequent research on floods in relation to causal precipitation and synoptic conditions is usually carried out regionally, although some events often affect areas of a size of entire countries or even larger. The thesis was focused exactly on these large-scale precipitation and flood events that occurred in the second half of the 20th century and then until 2013, for which the size of the affected area is as crucial in the extremity assessment as the magnitude of flood discharges or precipitation totals. The extremity indices used for the assessment of extreme precipitation and flood events connected both aspects. The larger area of interest defined within central Europe allowed examining the spatial structure of events, the differences between them, and their relation to conditions in the atmosphere. To connect the extremes of precipitation with extremes in atmospheric conditions, the causal circulation was..