Antecedent Wetness Conditions of European Floods: A Comprehensive Study

In this study we explored the capability of soil moisture, river discharge and antecedent precipitation indices to predict the antecedent wetness conditions of a large dataset of flood events extracted from 881 catchments across Europe. This study is the first one using a so large number of catchments and aims at shedding light on the connections between flood response and catchment conditions prior to the flood event. First results show that satellite soil moisture is the best predictor among the selected ones with significant implications for flood and flash flood forecasting operational applications.