Global warming increases the frequency of river floods in Europe

Alfieri, Lorenzo; Burek, P.; Feyen, Luc; Forzieri, Giovanni

doi:10.5194/hessd-12-1119-2015

Cited by 38 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Our results correlate well with assessments made by the World Resources Institute (2015), Alfieri et al (2015) and Arnell and Gosling (2014). The World Resources Institute concludes that the number of people affected by floods will more than double by 2030, while Alfieri et al conclude that on average, flood peaks with a return period of 100 years or more will double in frequency within the next 30 years in Europe.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Future bottlenecks in international river basins: where transboundary institutions, population growth and hydrological variability intersect

Bakker

Duncan

2017

Water International

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Using global data, this article examines the nexus of transboundary flood events and future social vulnerability. Which international river basins are forecast to experience an increase in both hydrological variability and population in the future, but currently lack institutional provisions to deal with these shared events? Concentrations of elevated risk are found in several basins in Central Asia, Central America and Central Africa. The article ends by highlighting transboundary basins that merit further investigation and possibly additional institution building to reduce urban flood risk. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Future bottlenecks in international river basins: where transboundary institutions, population growth and hydrological variability intersect

Bakker

Duncan

2017

Water International

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“…Negative changes are found overall in four countries. In the time slice 2080 they are projected to take place only in Finland (À8% in EAPA and À15% in EAD) and in Lithuania (À30% in EAPA and À28% in EAD), due to a reduction in snowmeltdriven floods (see Alfieri et al, 2015).…”

Section: Flood Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In parallel, we used flood hazard estimates under high-end climate scenarios from the work by Alfieri et al (2015) in the form of magnitude and recurrence of projected discharge peaks. Extreme value statistical distributions were fitted on the simulated discharge annual maxima of the control period , to derive analytical relations between extreme discharges Q and probability of occurrence (and consequently of their return period T), in each point of the European river network at 5 km grid resolution.…”

Section: Modelling Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this work Lisflood was run on the European domain at 5 km spatial resolution and daily time step. More details on the model setup, the parameter calibration and the hydrological simulations driven by the climate projections of Table 1 are given by Alfieri et al (2015).…”

Section: Numerical Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, historical (1976Hence, historical ( -2005 and future (2006-2100) simulated peaks larger than the 2-years value were transformed into return periods by inverting the relations between discharge and return period. In this step, a Gumbel extreme value distribution was assumed for annual maximum discharges, as described by Alfieri et al (2015).…”

Section: Modelling Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ensemble flood risk assessment in Europe under high end climate scenarios

Alfieri

Feyen

Dottori

et al. 2015

Global Environmental Change

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243

161

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Keywords:EURO-CORDEX climate projections RCP 8.5 Shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP) Flood risk Potential flood damage A B S T R A C T At the current rate of global warming, the target of limiting it within 2 degrees by the end of the century seems more and more unrealistic. Policymakers, businesses and organizations leading international negotiations urge the scientific community to provide realistic and accurate assessments of the possible consequences of so called "high end" climate scenarios.This study illustrates a novel procedure to assess the future flood risk in Europe under high levels of warming. It combines ensemble projections of extreme streamflow for the current century based on EURO-CORDEX RCP 8.5 climate scenarios with recent advances in European flood hazard mapping. Further novelties include a threshold-based evaluation of extreme event magnitude and frequency, an alternative method to removing bias in climate projections, the latest pan-European exposure maps, and an improved flood vulnerability estimation.Estimates of population affected and direct flood damages indicate that by the end of the century the socio-economic impact of river floods in Europe is projected to increase by an average 220% due to climate change only. When coherent socio-economic development pathways are included in the assessment, central estimates of population annually affected by floods range between 500,000 and 640,000 in 2050, and between 540,000 and 950,000 in 2080, as compared to 216,000 in the current climate. A larger range is foreseen in the annual flood damage, currently of 5.3 Bs, which is projected to rise at 20-40 Bs in 2050 and 30-100 Bs in 2080, depending on the future economic growth. 2015 Z. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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Extreme sea levels on the rise along Europe's coasts

et al. 2017

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Future extreme sea levels (ESLs) and flood risk along European coasts will be strongly impacted by global warming. Yet, comprehensive projections of ESL that include mean sea level (MSL), tides, waves, and storm surges do not exist. Here, we show changes in all components of ESLs until 2100 in view of climate change. We find that by the end of this century, the 100-year ESL along Europe's coastlines is on average projected to increase by 57 cm for Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP)4.5 and 81 cm for RCP8.5. The North Sea region is projected to face the highest increase in ESLs, amounting to nearly 1 m under RCP8.5 by 2100, followed by the Baltic Sea and Atlantic coasts of the UK and Ireland. Relative sea level rise (RSLR) is shown to be the main driver of the projected rise in ESL, with increasing dominance toward the end of the century and for the high-concentration pathway. Changes in storm surges and waves enhance the effects of RSLR along the majority of northern European coasts, locally with contributions up to 40%. In southern Europe, episodic extreme events tend to stay stable, except along the Portuguese coast and the Gulf of Cadiz where reductions in surge and wave extremes offset RSLR by 20-30%. By the end of this century, 5 million Europeans currently under threat of a 100-year ESL could be annually at risk from coastal flooding under high-end warming. The presented dataset is available through this link: http://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/collection/LISCOAST. Plain Language SummaryFuture extreme sea levels and flood risk along European coasts will be strongly impacted by global warming. Here, we show changes in all acting components, i.e., sea level rise, tides, waves, and storm surges, until 2100 in view of climate change. We find that by the end of this century the 100-year event along Europe will on average increase between 57 and 81 cm. The North Sea region is projected to face the highest increase, amounting to nearly 1 m under a high emission scenario by 2100, followed by the Baltic Sea and Atlantic coasts of the UK and Ireland. Sea level rise is the main driver of the changes, but intensified climate extremes along most of northern Europe can have significant local effects. Little changes in climate extremes are shown along southern Europe, with the exception of a projected decrease along the Portuguese coast and the Gulf of Cadiz, offseting sea level rise by 20-30%. By the end of this century, 5 million Europeans currently under threat of a 100-year coastal flood event could be annually at risk from coastal flooding under high-end warming.

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Global warming increases the frequency of river floods in Europe

Cited by 38 publications

References 43 publications

Future bottlenecks in international river basins: where transboundary institutions, population growth and hydrological variability intersect

Future bottlenecks in international river basins: where transboundary institutions, population growth and hydrological variability intersect

Ensemble flood risk assessment in Europe under high end climate scenarios

Extreme sea levels on the rise along Europe's coasts

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