Rising global temperature has put increasing pressure on understanding the linkage between atmospheric warming and the occurrence of natural hazards. While the Paris Agreement has set the ambitious target to limiting global warming to 1.5 ∘ C compared to preindustrial levels, scientists are urged to explore scenarios for different warming thresholds and quantify ranges of socioeconomic impact. In this work, we present a framework to estimate the economic damage and population affected by river floods at global scale. It is based on a modeling cascade involving hydrological, hydraulic and socioeconomic impact simulations, and makes use of state-of-the-art global layers of hazard, exposure and vulnerability at 1-km grid resolution. An ensemble of seven high-resolution global climate projections based on Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 is used to derive streamflow simulations in the present and in the future climate. Those were analyzed to assess the frequency and magnitude of river floods and their impacts under scenarios corresponding to 1.5 ∘ C, 2 ∘ C, and 4 ∘ C global warming. Results indicate a clear positive correlation between atmospheric warming and future flood risk at global scale. At 4 ∘ C global warming, countries representing more than 70% of the global population and global gross domestic product will face increases in flood risk in excess of 500%. Changes in flood risk are unevenly distributed, with the largest increases in Asia, U.S., and Europe. In contrast, changes are statistically not significant in most countries in Africa and Oceania for all considered warming levels.

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Flood hazard maps at trans-national scale have potential for a large number of applications ranging from climate change studies, reinsurance products, aid to emergency operations for major flood crisis, among others. However, at continental scales, only few products are available, due to the difficulty of retrieving large consistent data sets. Moreover, these are produced at relatively coarse grid resolution, which limits their applications to qualitative assessments. At finer resolution, maps are often limited to country boundaries, due to limited data sharing at trans-national level. The creation of a European flood hazard map would currently imply a collection of scattered regional maps, often lacking mutual consistency due to the variety of adopted approaches and quality of the underlying input data. In this work, we derive a pan-European flood hazard map at 100 m resolution. The proposed approach is based on expanding a literature cascade model through a physically based approach. A combination of distributed hydrological and hydraulic models was set up for the European domain. Then, an observed meteorological data set is used to derive a long-term streamflow simulation and subsequently coherent design flood hydrographs for a return period of 100 years along the pan-European river network. Flood hydrographs are used to simulate areas at risk of flooding and output maps are merged into a pan-European flood hazard map. The quality of this map is evaluated for selected areas in Germany and United Kingdom against national/regional hazard maps. Despite inherent limitations and model resolution issues, simulated maps are in good agreement with reference maps (hit rate between 59% and 78%, critical success index between 43% and 65%), suggesting strong potential for a number of applications at the European scale.

Global flood risk models were developed to identify risk hotspots in a world with increasing flood occurrence. Here we assess the ability and limitations of the current models and suggest what is needed moving forward. Table 1 | Links to models, tools, and programmes discussed in the text.

In this work we evaluate the implications of climate change for future fluvial flood risk in Europe, considering climate developments under the SRES A2 (high emission) and B2 (low emission) scenario. We define flood risk as the product of flood probability (or hazard), exposure of capital and population, and vulnerability to the effect of flooding. From the European flood hazard simulations of Dankers and Feyen (J Geophys Res 114: D16108. ) discharges with return periods of 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 250 and 500 years were extracted and converted into flood inundation extents and depths using a planar approximation approach. Flood inundation extents and depths were transformed into direct monetary damage using country specific flood depth-damage functions and land use information. Population exposure was assessed by overlaying the flood inundation information with data on population density. By linearly interpolating damages and population exposed between the different return periods, we constructed damage and population exposure probability functions under present and future climate. From the latter expected annual damages (EAD) and expected annual population exposed (EAP) were calculated. To account for flood protection the damage and population exposure probability functions were truncated at design return periods based on the country GDP/capita. Results indicate that flood damages are projected to rise across much of Western Europe. Decreases in flood damage are consistently projected for north-eastern parts of Europe. For EU27 as a whole, current EAD of approximately €6.4 billion is projected to amount to €14-21.5 billion (in constant prices of 2006) by the end of this century, depending on the scenario. The number of people affected by flooding is projected to rise by approximately 250,000 to 400,000. Notwithstanding these numbers are subject to

Floods are the most frequent of natural disasters, affecting millions of people across the globe every year. The anticipation and forecasting of floods at the global scale is crucial to preparing for severe events and providing early awareness where local flood models and warning services may not exist. As numerical weather prediction models continue to improve, operational centers are increasingly using their meteorological output to drive hydrological models, creating hydrometeorological systems capable of forecasting river flow and flood events at much longer lead times than has previously been possible. Furthermore, developments in, for example, modelling capabilities, data, and resources in recent years have made it possible to produce global scale flood forecasting systems. In this paper, the current state of operational large-scale flood forecasting is discussed, including probabilistic forecasting of floods using ensemble prediction systems. Six state-of-the-art operational large-scale flood forecasting systems are reviewed, describing similarities and differences in their approaches to forecasting floods at the global and continental scale. Operational systems currently have the capability to produce coarse-scale discharge forecasts in the mediumrange and disseminate forecasts and, in some cases, early warning products in real time across the globe, in support of national forecasting capabilities. With improvements in seasonal weather forecasting, future advances may include more seamless hydrological forecasting at the global scale alongside a move towards multi-model forecasts and grand ensemble techniques, responding to the requirement of developing multi-hazard early warning systems for disaster risk reduction.

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