Global drivers of future river flood risk
Understanding global future river flood risk is a prerequisite for the quantification of climate change impacts and planning effective adaptation strategies. Existing global flood risk projections fail to integrate the combined dynamics of expected socio-economic development and climate change.
New global river flood risk projections
We present the first global future river flood risk projections that separate the impacts of climate change and socio-economic development. The projections are based on an ensemble of climate model outputs, socio-economic scenarios, and a state-of-the-art hydrologic river flood model combined with socio-economic impact models.
Flood risks increase factor 20, without action
Globally, absolute damage may increase by up to a factor of 20 by the end of the century without action. Countries in Southeast Asia face a severe increase in flood risk. Although climate change contributes significantly to the increase in risk in Southeast Asia, we show that it is dwarfed by the effect of socio-economic growth, even after normalization for gross domestic product (GDP) growth.
Climate change relevant driver
African countries face a strong increase in risk mainly due to socio-economic change. However, when normalized to GDP, climate change becomes by far the strongest driver. Both high- and low-income countries may benefit greatly from investing in adaptation measures, for which our analysis provides a basis.
The global flood risk model GLOFRIS has been used in various recent assessments, amongst others:
>PBL 2014. Towards a world of cities in 2050. An outlook on water-related challenges
>GWP/OECD 2015. Securing Water, Sustaining Growth
>World Bank 2015. Shock waves. Managing the impacts of climate change on poverty
Authors
Specifications
- Publication title
- Global drivers of future river flood risk
- Publication date
- 21 December 2015
- Publication type
- Publication
- Magazine
- Nature Climate Change 2015
- Product number
- 2350
