Global flood risk under climate change

Hirabayashi, Yukiko; Roobavannan, Mahendran; Koirala, Sujan; Konoshima, Lisako; Yamazaki, Dai; Watanabe, Satoshi; Kim, Hyungjun; Kanae, Shinjiro

doi:10.1038/nclimate1911

Cited by 2,219 publications

(1,620 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

1,427

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Kleinen and Petschel-Held (2007) summed the numbers of people living in river basins where the return period of the current 50-year return period event reduces due to climate change. Hirabayashi and Kanae (2009) and Hirabayashi et al (2013) counted each year the number of people living in 1×1°grid cells and flood-prone areas respectively where the simulated flood peak exceeded the current 100-year flood. Feyen et al (2009Feyen et al ( , 2012 combined simulated flood frequency curves with flood depth-damage functions to estimate current and future average annual damage.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents an assessment of the implications of climate change for global river flood risk. It is based on the estimation of flood frequency relationships at a grid resolution of 0.5×0.5°, using a global hydrological model with climate scenarios derived from 21 climate models, together with projections of future population. Four indicators of the flood hazard are calculated; change in the magnitude and return period of flood peaks, flood-prone population and cropland exposed to substantial change in flood frequency, and a generalised measure of regional flood risk based on combining frequency curves with generic flood damage functions. Under one climate model, emissions and socioeconomic scenario (HadCM3 and SRES A1b), in 2050 the current 100-year flood would occur at least twice as frequently across 40 % of the globe, approximately 450 million flood-prone people and 430 thousand km 2 of flood-prone cropland would be exposed to a doubling of flood frequency, and global flood risk would increase by approximately 187 % over the risk in 2050 in the absence of climate change. There is strong regional variability (most adverse impacts would be in Asia), and considerable variability between climate models. In 2050, the range in increased exposure across 21 climate models under SRES A1b is 31-450 million people and 59 to 430 thousand km 2 of cropland, and the change in risk varies between −9 and +376 %. The paper presents impacts by region, and also presents relationships between change in global mean surface temperature and impacts on the global flood hazard. There are a number of caveats with the analysis; it is based on one global hydrological model only, the climate scenarios are constructed using pattern-scaling, and the precise impacts are sensitive to some of the assumptions in the definition and application.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…E-mail: lenggy.11b@igsnrr.ac.cn Orlowsky and Seneviratne, 2013;Trenberth et al, 2014) or runoff/streamflow related extremes (e.g. Hirabayashi et al, 2013;Forzieri et al, 2014;van Huijgevoort et al, 2014). The limitations of these studies are that most of them focus on one single variable of interest for analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…drought/floods) have applied the so-called fixed threshold method (e.g. Hirabayashi et al, 2013;Dankers et al, 2014;Prudhomme et al, 2014). Typically, characteristics of extremes in the 21st century are identified by using the threshold derived from the fixed historical period (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessments of joint hydrological extreme risks in a warming climate in China

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Understanding how hydrological extremes would respond to global warming and its associated uncertainties is important for better designing mitigation and adaption strategies to cope with global change. Very few works have investigated the changes in future hydrological extremes and, especially, the more devastating joint hydrological extremes over China. In this article, two combinations of joint extremes [i.e. high runoff/high soil moisture (HRHS) and low runoff/low soil moisture (LRLS)] are designed for analysis. To derive the scenarios of hydrological conditions, the bias-corrected daily climate projections from five global circulation models (GCMs) under the historical and Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 (RCP8.5) emission scenarios are used to drive the calibrated Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model from 1951 to 2099 over China. Results show notable increase of occurrence of HRHS in Northeast China, LRLS in Northwest and South of China under 2 ∘ C global warming. The spatial pattern of changes in joint extremes tends to remain stable with global temperature increase up to 3 ∘ C. Compared with the individual extreme risk, joint extreme are much more concentrated in Northwest and South China and the magnitude of changes is several times larger. Larger areas experiencing changes are found when using lower standards of extreme definition. Because hydrological regime may change gradually in response to climate change, the threshold derived from present regime may lead to misrepresentation of extreme risk analysis. This was demonstrated by the ten times smaller magnitude of changes when adopting the updated transient threshold representing the changing hydrological regime, thus providing a low-boundary of potential changes in extremes. Our results highlight the importance of considering the changing hydrological regime in addition to choosing various levels of threshold for extreme definition in order to cover the full range of possible extreme changes in a warming climate.

show abstract

“…Hydrological extremes such as drought and flood events have frequently struck many parts of the world in the past few decades (Andreadis et al, 2005;Zhai et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2011a) and are likely to become more frequent under a changing climate (Milly et al, 2002;Leng et al, 2015Leng et al, , 2016Hirabayashi et al, 2008Hirabayashi et al, , 2013. These hydrological extremes usually bring significant and far-reaching impacts to the economy, society and environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These hydrological extremes usually bring significant and far-reaching impacts to the economy, society and environment. The reported annual losses from droughts and floods reached tens of billions of U.S. dollars, with thousands of people killed (Hirabayashi et al, 2013) and millions of people affected each year across the world (Wilhite, 2000;Below et al, 2007). One possible reason for such huge losses is the lack of prompt risk response strategies due to the scarcity of accurate drought/flood early-warning information.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydrological monitoring and seasonal forecasting: Progress and perspectives

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hydrological monitoring and seasonal forecasting is an active research field because of its potential applications in hydrological risk assessment, preparedness and mitigation. In recent decades, developments in ground and satellite measurements have made the hydrometeorological information readily available, and advances in information technology have facilitated the data analysis in a real-time manner. New progress in climate research and modeling has enabled the prediction of seasonal climate with reasonable accuracy and increased resolution. These emerging techniques and advances have enabled more timely acquisition of accurate hydrological fluxes and status, and earlier warning of extreme hydrological events such as droughts and floods. This paper gives current state-of-the-art understanding of the uncertainties in hydrological monitoring and forecasting, reviews the efforts and progress in operational hydrological monitoring system assisted by observations from various sources and experimental seasonal hydrological forecasting, and briefly introduces the current monitoring and forecasting practices in China. The grand challenges and perspectives for the near future are also discussed, including acquiring and extracting reliable information for monitoring and forecasting, predicting realistic hydrological fluxes and states in the river basin being significantly altered by human activity, and filling the gap between numerical models and the end user. We highlight the importance of understanding the needs of the operational water management and the priority to transfer research knowledge to decision-makers.

show abstract

Global flood risk under climate change

Cited by 2,219 publications

References 19 publications

The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale

The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale

Assessments of joint hydrological extreme risks in a warming climate in China

Hydrological monitoring and seasonal forecasting: Progress and perspectives

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About