Knowledge about changes of flood occurrence patterns is important for risk estimation of the future. Robust and well-
calibrated paleoflood records, derived e.g. from lake sediments, are excellent natural archives to investigate flood
variability of the past and to use the data for further modelling. In this paper, we analyse a 7100 year summer flood
record recovered from Lake Mondsee (NE Alps), using a statistical approach. We identify a point process of renewal
type, with a significant change-point of the occurrence pattern around 350 AD, switching from the overlay of two
mechanisms of event recurrences of 5 and 50 years before to 2 and 17 years after this change-point. This changepoint
approach enables a comparison to other flood records, and possibly to relate event frequencies to climatic
conditions. We also highlight how lower temporal resolution of flood records can hamper the analysis of relations to
climatic signals. Hence high-resolution records with robust chronologies and flood information (e.g. seasonality and
event characteristics) are essential to improve the understanding of the interplay between climatic signals and flood
occurrences, which is an important ingredient for proper risk estimation and risk management.