Increased human and economic losses from river flooding with anthropogenic 
warming

Dottori, F.; Szewczyk, W.; Ciscar, J.-C.; Zhao, Fang; Alfieri, L.; Hirabayashi, Y.; Bianchi, A.; Mongelli, I.; Frieler, Katja; Betts, R. A.; Feyen, L.

doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0257-z

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Increased human and economic losses from river flooding with anthropogenic warming

Authors

Dottori, F.
External Organizations;

Szewczyk, W.
External Organizations;

Ciscar, J.-C.
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/fangzhao

Zhao, Fang
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Alfieri, L.
External Organizations;

Hirabayashi, Y.
External Organizations;

Bianchi, A.
External Organizations;

Mongelli, I.
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/Katja.Frieler

Frieler, Katja
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

Betts, R. A.
External Organizations;

Feyen, L.
External Organizations;

External Ressource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PIKpublic

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Dottori, F., Szewczyk, W., Ciscar, J.-C., Zhao, F., Alfieri, L., Hirabayashi, Y., Bianchi, A., Mongelli, I., Frieler, K., Betts, R. A., Feyen, L. (2018): Increased human and economic losses from river flooding with anthropogenic warming. - Nature Climate Change, 8, 9, 781-786.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0257-z

Cite as: https://publications.pik-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_22987

Abstract

River floods are among some of the costliest natural disasters1, but their socio-economic impacts under contrasting warming levels remain little explored2. Here, using a multi-model framework, we estimate human losses, direct economic damage and subsequent indirect impacts (welfare losses) under a range of temperature (1.5 °C, 2 °C and 3 °C warming)3 and socio-economic scenarios, assuming current vulnerability levels and in the absence of future adaptation. With temperature increases of 1.5 °C, depending on the socio-economic scenario, it is found that human losses from flooding could rise by 70–83%, direct flood damage by 160–240%, with a relative welfare reduction between 0.23 and 0.29%. In a 2 °C world, by contrast, the death toll is 50% higher, direct economic damage doubles and welfare losses grow to 0.4%. Impacts are notably higher under 3 C warming, but at the same time, variability between ensemble members also increases, leading to greater uncertainty regarding flood impacts at higher warming levels. Flood impacts are further shown to have an uneven regional distribution, with the greatest losses observed in the Asian continent at all analysed warming levels. It is clear that increased adaptation and mitigation efforts—perhaps through infrastructural investment4—are needed to offset increasing risk of river floods in the future.