Climate change and river floods in the European Union: Socio-economic consequences and the costs and benefits of adaptation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Assessing river flood risk and adaptation in Europe—review of projections for the future
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 2010
Flood damages have exhibited a rapid upward trend, both globally and in Europe, faster than population and economic growth. Hence, vigorous attempts of attribution of changes have been made. Flood risk and vulnerability tend to change over many areas, due to a range of climatic and nonclimatic impacts whose relative importance is site-specific. Flooding is a complex phenomenon and there are several generating mechanisms, among others intense and/or long-lasting precipitation, snowmelt, ice jam. Projected climate-driven changes in future flood frequency are complex, depending on the generating mechanism, e.g., increasing flood magnitudes where floods result of heavy rainfall and possibly decreasing magnitudes where floods are generated by spring snowmelt. Climate change is likely to cause an increase of the risk of riverine flooding Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change
Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods
Nature, 2019
Climate change has led to concerns about increasing river floods resulting from the greater water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere 1. These concerns are reinforced by evidence of increasing economic losses associated with flooding in many parts of the world, including Europe 2. Any changes in river floods would have lasting implications for the design of flood protection measures and flood risk zoning. However, existing studies have been unable to identify a consistent continental-scale climatic-change signal in flood discharge observations in Europe 3 , because of the limited spatial coverage and number of hydrometric stations. Here we demonstrate clear regional patterns of both increases and decreases in observed river flood discharges in the past five decades in Europe, which are manifestations of a changing climate. Our results-arising from the most complete database of European flooding so farsuggest that: increasing autumn and winter rainfall has resulted in increasing floods in northwestern Europe; decreasing precipitation and increasing evaporation have led to decreasing floods in medium and large catchments in southern Europe; and decreasing snow cover and snowmelt, resulting from warmer temperatures, have led to decreasing floods in eastern Europe. Regional flood discharge trends in Europe range from an increase of about 11 per cent per decade to a decrease of 23 per cent. Notwithstanding the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the observational record, the flood changes identified here are broadly consistent with climate model projections for the next century 4,5 , suggesting that climatedriven changes are already happening and supporting calls for the consideration of climate change in flood risk management. River floods are among the most costly natural hazards. Global annual average losses are estimated at US$104 billion 6 and are expected to increase with economic growth, urbanization and climatic change 2,7. Physical arguments of increased heavy precipitation resulting from the enhanced water-holding capacity of a warmer atmosphere and
Summer Floods in Central Europe – Climate Change Track?
Natural Hazards, 2005
In Central Europe, river flooding has been recently recognized as a major hazard, in particular after the 1997 Odra /Oder flood, the 2001 Vistula flood, and the most destructive 2002 deluge on the Labe/Elbe. Major recent floods in central Europe are put in perspective and their common elements are identified. Having observed that flood risk and vulnerability are likely to have grown in many areas, one is curious to understand the reasons for growth. These can be sought in socio-economic domain (humans encroaching into floodplain areas), terrestrial systems (land-cover changes -urbanization, deforestation, reduction of wetlands, river regulation), and climate system. The atmospheric capacity to absorb moisture, its potential water content, and thus potential for intense precipitation, are likely to increase in a warmer climate. The changes in intense precipitation and high flows are examined, based on observations and projections. Study of projected changes in intense precipitation, using climate models, for several areas of central Europe, and in particular, for drainage basins of the upper Labe/Elbe, Odra/Oder, and Vistula is reported. Significant changes have been identified between future projections and the reference period, of relevance to flood hazard in areas, which have experienced severe recent floodings.
Changing climate shifts timing of European floods
Science (New York, N.Y.), 2017
A warming climate is expected to have an impact on the magnitude and timing of river floods; however, no consistent large-scale climate change signal in observed flood magnitudes has been identified so far. We analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the past five decades, using a pan-European database from 4262 observational hydrometric stations, and found clear patterns of change in flood timing. Warmer temperatures have led to earlier spring snowmelt floods throughout northeastern Europe; delayed winter storms associated with polar warming have led to later winter floods around the North Sea and some sectors of the Mediterranean coast; and earlier soil moisture maxima have led to earlier winter floods in western Europe. Our results highlight the existence of a clear climate signal in flood observations at the continental scale.
Impact of climate change on European winter and summer flood losses
Advances in Water Resources
Climate change is expected to alter European floods and associated economic losses in various ways. Here we investigate the impact of precipitation change on European average winter and summer financial losses due to flooding under a 1.5 °C warming scenario (reflecting a projected climate in the year 2115 according to RCP2.6) and for a counterfactual current-climate scenario where the climate has evolved without anthropogenic influence (reflecting a climate corresponding to pre-industrial conditions). Climate scenarios were generated with the Community Atmospheric Model (CAM) version 5. For each scenario, we derive a set of weights that when applied to the current climate's precipitation results in a climatology that approximates that of the scenario. We apply the weights to annual losses from a well-calibrated (to the current climate) flood loss model that spans 50,000 years and re-compute the average annual loss to assess the impact of precipitation changes induced by anthropogenic climate change. The method relies on a large stochastic set of physically based flood model simulations and allows quick assessment of potential loss changes due to change in precipitation based on two statistics, namely total precipitation, and total precipitation of very wet days (defined here as the total precipitation of days above the 95th percentile of daily precipitation). We compute the statistics with the raw CAM precipitation and bias-corrected precipitation. Our results show that for both raw and bias-corrected statistics i) average flood loss in Europe generally tend to increase in winter and decrease in summer for the future scenario, and consistent with that change we also show that ii) average flood losses have increased (decreased) for winter (summer) from pre-industrial conditions to the current day. The magnitude of the change varies among scenarios and statistics chosen.
Sensitivity of flood events to global climate change
Journal of Hydrology, 1997
The sensitivity of Acheloos river flood events at the outfall of the mountainous Mesochofa catchment in Central Greece was analysed under various scenarios of global climate change. The climate change pattern was simulated through a set of hypothetical and monthly GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) scenarios of temperature increase coupled with precipitation changes. The daily outflow of the catchment, which is dominated by spring snowmelt runoff, was simulated by the coupling of snowmelt and soil moisture accounting models of the US National Weather Service River Forecast System. Two threshold levels were used to define a flood day---the double and triple long-term mean daily streamfiow-and the flood parameters (occurrences, duration, magnitude, etc.) for these cases were detexrnined. Despite the complicated response of flood events to temperature increase and threshold, both hypothetical and monthly GISS representations of climate change resulted in more and longer flood events for climates with increased precipitation. All climates yielded larger flood volumes and greater mean values of flood peaks with respect to precipitation increase. The lower threshold resulted in more. and longer flood occurrences, as well as smaller flood volumes and peaks than those of the upper one. The combination of higher and frequent flood events could lead to greater risks of inundation and possible damage to structures. Furthermore, the winter swelling of the streamflow could increase erosion of the river bed and banks and hence modify the river profile.
Blöschl et al.: Changing climate shifts timing of European floods. Science 357 (2017): 588-590
A warming climate is expected to have an impact on the magnitude and timing of river floods; however, no consistent large-scale climate change signal in observed flood magnitudes has been identified so far. We analyzed the timing of river floods in Europe over the past five decades, using a pan-European database from 4262 observational hydrometric stations, and found clear patterns of change in flood timing. Warmer temperatures have led to earlier spring snowmelt floods throughout northeastern Europe; delayed winter storms associated with polar warming have led to later winter floods around the North Sea and some sectors of the Mediterranean coast; and earlier soil moisture maxima have led to earlier winter floods in western Europe. Our results highlight the existence of a clear climate signal in flood observations at the continental scale.
No upward trends in the occurrence of extreme floods in central Europe
Nature, 2003
Extreme river floods have been a substantial natural hazard in Europe over the past centuries 1 , and radiative effects of recent anthropogenic changes in atmospheric composition are expected to cause climate changes, especially enhancement of the hydrological cycle 2 , leading to an increased flood risk 3,4 . For the past few decades, however, observations from Europe 1,5-7 do not show a clear increase in flood occurrence rate. Here we present longerterm records of winter and summer floods in two of the largest rivers in central Europe, the Elbe and Oder rivers. For the past 80 to 150 yr, we find a decrease in winter flood occurrence in both rivers, while summer floods show no trend, consistent with trends in extreme precipitation occurrence. The reduction in winter flood occurrence can partly be attributed to fewer events of strong freezing-following such events, breaking river ice at the end of the winter may function as a water barrier and enhance floods severely. Additionally, we detect significant long-term changes in flood occurrence rates in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and conclude that reductions in river length, construction of reservoirs and deforestation have had minor effects on flood frequency.
Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Hydrological Extremes Across Europe
EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, 2012
Consequently, the spatial and temporal variability of water resource, or in general the water balance, can be significantly which in turn affects agriculture, industry and urban development. Climate change is expected to have adverse impacts on socio economic development globally; the degree of the impact will vary across nations [7].
Climatic Change, 2006
Most studies on the impact of climate change on regional water resources focus on longterm average flows or mean water availability, and they rarely take the effects of altered human water use into account. When analyzing extreme events such as floods and droughts, the assessments are typically confined to smaller areas and case studies. At the same time it is acknowledged that climate change may severely alter the risk of hydrological extremes over large regional scales, and that human water use will put additional pressure on future water resources. In an attempt to bridge these various aspects, this paper presents a first-time continental, integrated analysis of possible impacts of global change (here defined as climate and water use change) on future flood and drought frequencies for the selected study area of Europe. The global integrated water model WaterGAP is evaluated regarding its capability to simulate high and low-flow regimes and is then applied to calculate relative changes in flood and drought frequencies. The results indicate large 'critical regions' for which significant changes in flood or drought risks are expected under the proposed global change scenarios. The regions most prone to a rise in flood frequencies are northern to northeastern Europe, while southern and southeastern Europe show significant increases in drought frequencies. In the critical regions, events with an intensity of today's 100-year floods and droughts may recur every 10-50 years by the 2070s. Though interim and preliminary, and despite the inherent uncertainties in the presented approach, the results underpin the importance of developing mitigation and adaptation strategies for global change impacts on a continental scale.