Editor's choice 

Winter storms in the German Bight are a significant coastal hazard in the southeastern North Sea. The authors use a model for enhanced seasonal forecasting accuracy. This enhancement focuses on storms identified by the highest wind speeds, determined using sea-level pressure data, during winter. The forecasting system, comprising 64 simulations initiated each November, aims to forecast these storms for winters spanning from 1960 to 2018. Initial forecasts for the first winter proved inaccurate. However, by concentrating on specific weather patterns in September and November linked to these storms, the authors refined their forecasting method. Selecting the most reliable simulations based on these patterns significantly improved the forecasting accuracy for winter storms, indicating enhanced predictability of major atmospheric changes. Their simulations might be applied to other similar applications.

This paper brings forward a new use for recent climate models, allowing the representation of convection at a fine spatial scale for the analysis of flash floods in a Mediterranean context. Results indicate a better performance to reproduce floods compared to the previous generation of climate models. This study is the first one that obtains future flood scenarios from the input of a hydrological model whose input is the output of Convection-Permitting regional climate Models over the Mediterranean. There are also hardly any studies on the impact of climate change on floods in the Mediterranean region, and this work provides that information, based on a rigorous hydrometeorological study.

Justification of handling editor: The paper describes a methodology for designing an early-warning for landslides based in open source low cost instruments. This will be of interest to wider audiences since it is at the interface of earth sciences, Internet of Things (IOT), wireless sensor networks, and communications.

I agree with handling editor

Droughts and associated heat waves threaten society and nature, as again demonstrated in this year's drought event in Europe. This study examines the impact of global warming on drought severity in west-central Europe by creating future analogues of present-day droughts. On the one hand, this approach allows the authors to investigate changes in droughts conditional on the present-day atmospheric circulation. On the other hand, the future drought analogues are directly linked to real-world events and their societal impact, which make the results very tangible and therewith useful for climate change communication to policy makers, decision makers as well as the broader public.

I agree with the handling editor and suggest considering it as a highlight paper.

This paper produces a map for all of Italy that classifies different regions in terms of liquefaction triggering potential according to their seismic hazard level. The map MILQ (Mappa del potenziale d’Innesco della LiQuefazione), and the associated data are freely accessible at: www.distav.unige.it/rsni/milq.php. The results can be useful to guide land-use planners in deciding whether liquefaction is a hazard that needs to be considered within the planning processes or not. Furthermore, they can serve as a guide for recommending geological and geotechnical investigations aimed at evaluating liquefaction hazards or, conversely, rule out further studies with a consequent saving in efforts and money.

This paper clearly demonstrates the value of the rescue of historical meteorological data, as they help to come to a better assessment of the characteristics of events in the past. Using such data, the study is able to give evidence for physical processes of particular relevance for the intensity of an historical hazardous event. The approach makes an assessment of such events in the context of climate change and variability possible.

This paper presents current research findings that have recently been caught up with reality. One of the case studies reported, Joshimath, experienced a large acceleration in slope deformation in January 2023 that has damaged and destroyed many homes and businesses and has created an atmosphere of uncertainty and unrest within the town. This has been covered in many international news outlets (e.g. BBC, CNN, Reuters, Le Monde), and has raised questions about development issues in at-risk areas in the Himalaya.

I agree with the handling editor and suggest considering it as a highlight paper.

Here approaches to rank precipitation events according to their hazard characteristics are presented, while their impacts depend on many other factors as well like the orography, hydrological situation, exposure and vulnerability. Determining the severity of a precipitation event is not straight forward, as it depends on both the intensity on different time scales and the spatial extent. The weather extremity index (WEI) and the cross-scale WEI (xWEI) are used to determine the extremeness of precipitation events. The devastating event in the Ahr valley in Germany in July 2021 is shown to rank No 1 or 4 for Germany, dependent on the measure used. This emphasizes that it was extreme across multiple spatial and temporal scales, and the importance of considering different scales to determine the extremeness of rainfall events.

The NHESS paper “A climate-conditioned catastrophe risk model for UK flooding” by Bates and colleagues presents and validates a new flood model for the UK that simulates pluvial, fluvial and coastal flood risks at a resolution of 20 to 25 metres. The authors then use their scheme to estimate the probability-loss distribution for UK flooding under various future climate and policy scenarios. Their paper provides the most detailed and realistic analysis to date of current and future flood risk in the UK. The key findings of their work are: (1) Previous UK flood losses based on government data and used in national climate change risk assessments are overestimated by a factor of about 3. (2) Official UK estimates lie well outside the paper's modelled loss distribution, which is plausibly centred on the observations. (3) The UK 1% annual probability flood losses were only about 6% greater in the average climate conditions of 2020 than for the period of historical river flow and rainfall observations (centred approximately on 1995). (4) Increases in risk can be kept to around ~8% if all COP26 2030 carbon emission reduction pledges and ‘net zero’ commitments are implemented in full. (5) Implementing only the COP26 pledges increases UK 1% annual probability flood losses by ~23% above recent historical values, and potentially ~37% if climate sensitivity turns out to be higher than currently thought.

This paper examines the warning deficits in conjunction with the major flooding event in Germany of summer 2021. The event caused many fatalities and enormous damage. The warning procedures proved to be insufficient, and after investigations it was decided to install a cell broadcast system in Germany, which is already in place today. The deeper investigations on the warning perceptions and the influencing factors is of major interest to readers beyond the scientific community.

I agree with the statement proposed

The topic treated in this work is potentially interesting for our community, giving the threats presented for Sub-Saharan Africa; it is also a review, so it has the capability to attract a lot of attention from the public.

I also agree with tha handling editor.

The paper addresses historical flood marks as a information source, coming to the conclusion that it is worthwhile to maintain them, and include them in scientific evaluations. The authors find, for example, plausible and historically sound reasons in changed local hydraulic conditions by flood protection walls, and effects of exceptional processes during a massive ice jam.

This paper is very relevant for science but also society: the paper presents an approach for estimating rare to very rare floods at multiple sites in a large river basin. Compared to statistical approaches based on streamflow observations, the Continuous Simulation (CS) approach has substantial advantages in that it explicitly considers important processes of flood generation such as soil moisture, snow accumulation and snowmelt, and in addition can implement lake regulation, dam operation as well as lake and floodplain retention

The paper can be considered as highlight paper

I agree with the assessment of the handling editor: hot topic, excellent analysis, holistic perspective, clear relation to impacts and stakeholders. Therefore, I agree it qualifies as a potential highlight paper for NHESS. Best regards, Joaquim Pinto

The paper could have a strong impact in the entire Alpine region, where avalanche forecasting is a critical issue to manage

DKKV is the largest platform for disaster risk reduction in Germany and has been promoting prevention and disaster risk reduction in science, practice and in politics since the beginning of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction in 1990. This perspective brings the experience collected by DKKV providing challenges and step changes for natural hazards.