Abstract
Based on future scenario data and an improved quantitative assessment model of natural disaster risk, in this paper, we analyze the response of the characteristics of flooding events in China to 1.5 °C and 2 °C of global warming, quantitatively assess social and economic risks of the floods, and determine the integrated risk levels. The results indicate that for the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, the hazard and distribution area of the floods increase with increasing temperature and the influence range of floods in different levels expands more rapidly under RCP4.5 scenario. The floods mainly affect the social economy in the regions with lower altitudes and smaller slopes in eastern China. With intensification of temperature rise, the affected population and the direct economic losses would be aggravated. For 2 °C of global warming, under RCP8.5 scenario, affected population by floods would increase by 2 million and the economic risk would nearly double compared with 1.5 °C of global warming. The economic risk under RCP4.5 scenario would even reach three times that for 1.5 °C of global warming, but its proportion to GDP is lower than that of RCP8.5 scenario. Under both scenarios, the ranges of the medium-high flood risk zones would gradually expand westward and northward.
Highlights
In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans (IPCC, 2012; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014)
3 Results 3.1 Hazards of Floods When the global mean surface temperature (GMST) increases by 1.5°C, under RCP8.5 scenario, the distribution areas of severe, moderate, and mild floods would be about 1.92, 3.90, and 6.92 million km2, respectively
5 Conclusions 280 Based on future scenario data, in this paper, we calculated the hazard of floods under global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C and quantitatively assessed the social and economic risks of floods, and drawn the following conclusions
Summary
Changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans (IPCC, 2012; IPCC, 2014). At the global and regional scales, climate-related hazards have caused enormous damage (Kundzewicz et al, 2014; Johnson et al, 2016; Luo et al, 2018; Paprotny et al, 2018), resulting in a significant increase in economic losses (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003; Patz et al, 2005). 25 reported direct economic losses of $2.245 trillion USD, of which floods were the most frequent type of disaster, making up 43% of all recorded events (Swiss Re Group, 2017; UNISDR and CRED, 2018). Over the last 20 years, China has suffered the second largest loss due to the frequent occurrence and serious impacts of climate-related hazards (Ding et al, 2006; Huang et al, 2007; UNISDR and CRED, 2018). Among all of the meteorological and hydrological disasters, floods are characterized by sudden and frequent occurrence, and the direct economic losses caused by these events account for the largest proportion.
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