Abstract
AbstractTropical and subtropical regions can be particularly severely affected by flooding. Climate change is expected to lead to more intense precipitation in many regions of the world, increasing the frequency and magnitude of flood events. This paper presents a review of studies assessing the impacts of climate change on riverine flooding in the world's tropical and subtropical regions. A systematic quantitative approach was used to evaluate the literature. The majority of studies reported increases in flooding under climate change, with the most consistent increases predicted for South Asia, South East Asia, and the western Amazon. Results were more varied for Latin America and Africa where there was a notable paucity of studies. Our review points to the need for further studies in these regions as well as in Australia, in small to mid-sized catchments, and in rapidly urbanising catchments in the developing world. Adoption of non-stationary flood analysis techniques and improved site-specific socio-economic and environmental model scenarios were identified as important future directions for research. Data accessibility and mitigation of model uncertainty were recognised as the principal issues faced by researchers investigating the impacts of climate change on tropical and subtropical rivers.
Highlights
Floods are one of the most costly and widespread climaterelated natural hazards ( Jonkman )
Tropical and subtropical regions are often subjected to some of the worst flooding and this may be exacerbated under climate change
The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction ( ) reports that the 10 countries most prone to flooding are all located in tropical South and South East Asia, with countries in South America and
Summary
Floods are one of the most costly and widespread climaterelated natural hazards ( Jonkman ). There has been a steep upward trend in the number of studies conducted since 2010 with 90% of all reviewed literature published since this year and over half published since 2016 (Figure 5) This trend is most likely to continue as governments and researchers prioritise climate change impacts to assess past and future engineering design and planning. Yuan et al ( ) conducted a thorough assessment of the relative contributions to uncertainty from the emission scenario, climate model, statistical downscaling/bias correction technique, hydrological model, and flood frequency distribution. Dobler et al ( ) found similar results for Europe and suggested applying a range of bias correction techniques to account for this uncertainty when conducting impact studies related to extreme events These findings highlight the importance of bias correction, especially for the modelling of flooding. This typically only involves the consideration of a few key structures which are sufficient to capture the effects of regulation, compared with the many hundreds or thousands of dams that would need to be considered throughout the Yangtze or Ganges Basins
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