Journal
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 381-385Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2893
Keywords
-
Funding
- EC [308337]
- VENI grant from Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) [863.11.011]
- Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer project from Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment [5000002722]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Understanding global future river flood risk is a prerequisite for the quantification of climate change impacts and planning effective adaptation strategies(1). Existing global flood risk projections fail to integrate the combined dynamics of expected socio-economic development and climate change. 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(2), socio-economic scenarios(3), and a state-of-the-art hydrologic river flood model combined with socio-economic impact models(4,5). 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(6), we show that it is dwarfed by the effect of socio-economic growth, even after normalization for gross domestic product (GDP) growth. 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.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available