Increased human and economic losses from river flooding with anthropogenic warming
River floods are among some of the costliest natural disasters, but their socioeconomic impacts under contrasting warming levels remains little explored. Here, using a multi-model framework, we estimate human losses, direct economic damage, and subsequent indirect impacts (welfare losses) under a range of temperature (1.5°C, 2°C, and 3°C) and socioeconomic scenarios, assuming current vulnerability levels and in absence of future adaptation. With temperature increases of 1.5 °C, depending on the socioeconomic scenario, it is found that human losses from flooding could rise by 70 to 83%, direct flood damage by 160 to 240%, with a relative welfare reduction between 0.23 to 0.29%. In a 2°C world, by contrast, the death toll is 50% higher, direct economic damage doubles, and welfare losses grow to 0.4%. Impacts are notably higher under 3C warming, but at the same time, variability between ensemble members also increases, leading to greater uncertainty regarding flood impacts at higher warming levels. Flood impacts are further shown to have uneven regional distribution, with greatest losses observed over the Asian continent at all analysed warming levels. It is clear that increased adaptation and mitigation efforts – perhaps through infrastructural investment – are needed to offset increasing risk of river floods in the future.
DOTTORI Francesco;
SZEWCZYK Wojciech;
CISCAR MARTINEZ Juan Carlos;
ZHAO Fang;
ALFIERI Lorenzo;
HIRABAYASHI Yukiko;
BIANCHI Alessandra;
MONGELLI Ignazio;
FRIELER Katja;
BETTS Richard;
FEYEN Luc;
2018-09-03
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
JRC111224
1758-678X,
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0257-z,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC111224,
10.1038/s41558-018-0257-z,
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