Higher probability of compound flooding from precipitation and storm surge in Europe under anthropogenic climate change

Bevacqua, Emanuele; Maraun, Douglas; Vousdoukas, Michalis; Voukouvalas, Evangelos; Vrac, Mathieu; Mentaschi, Lorenzo; Widmann, Martin

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaw5531

Cited by 353 publications

(366 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Moreover, local characteristics like the bathymetry, catchment properties, and the presence of water control structures further influence the extent to which these interactions contribute to water level extremes at the considered river mouths (Gori et al, 2019;Veldkamp et al, 2018). Specific compound flood event modelling studies (Bilskie and Hagen, 2018;Kumbier et al, 2018) and comprehensive probabilistic simulations at local scales show that multivariate flood drivers result in highly non-linear responses of flood impact variables such as flood depth and flood extent (Couasnon et al, 2018;Serafin et al, 2019). Future assessments of compound flood hazard at the global scale should therefore focus on incorporating those multivariate processes and is left for future work.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring compound flood potential from river discharge and storm surge extremes at the global scale

Couasnon

Eilander

Muis

et al. 2020

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

180

144

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Abstract. The interaction between physical drivers from oceanographic, hydrological, and meteorological processes in coastal areas can result in compound flooding. Compound flood events, like Cyclone Idai and Hurricane Harvey, have revealed the devastating consequences of the co-occurrence of coastal and river floods. A number of studies have recently investigated the likelihood of compound flooding at the continental scale based on simulated variables of flood drivers, such as storm surge, precipitation, and river discharges. At the global scale, this has only been performed based on observations, thereby excluding a large extent of the global coastline. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap and identify regions with a high compound flooding potential from river discharge and storm surge extremes in river mouths globally. To do so, we use daily time series of river discharge and storm surge from state-of-the-art global models driven with consistent meteorological forcing from reanalysis datasets. We measure the compound flood potential by analysing both variables with respect to their timing, joint statistical dependence, and joint return period. Our analysis indicates many regions that deviate from statistical independence and could not be identified in previous global studies based on observations alone, such as Madagascar, northern Morocco, Vietnam, and Taiwan. We report possible causal mechanisms for the observed spatial patterns based on existing literature. Finally, we provide preliminary insights on the implications of the bivariate dependence behaviour on the flood hazard characterisation using Madagascar as a case study. Our global and local analyses show that the dependence structure between flood drivers can be complex and can significantly impact the joint probability of discharge and storm surge extremes. These emphasise the need to refine global flood risk assessments and emergency planning to account for these potential interactions.

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Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring compound flood potential from river discharge and storm surge extremes at the global scale

Couasnon

Eilander

Muis

et al. 2020

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

180

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Given that climate change is expected to increase the level of hazard in many parts of the continent through higher sea levels (Vousdoukas et al 2016a), river discharges (Alfieri et al 2015) and extreme precipitation (Lehtonen et al 2014), there is a strong need to model compound floods and produce future projections. Recent studies have made first such projections (Kew et al 2013;Arns et al 2017;Bevacqua et al 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pan-European hydrodynamic models and their ability to identify compound floods

et al. 2020

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The interaction between storm surges and inland run-off has been gaining increasing attention recently, as they have the potential to result in compound floods. In Europe, several flood events of this type have been recorded in the past century in Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy and UK. First projections of compound flood hazard under climate change have been made, but no study has so far analysed whether existing, independent climate and hydrodynamic models are able to reproduce the co-occurrence of storm surges, precipitation, river discharges or waves. Here, we investigate the dependence between the different drivers in different observational and modelled data set, utilizing gauge records and high-resolution outputs of climate reanalyses and hindcasts, hydrodynamic models of European coasts and rivers. The results show considerable regional differences in strength of the dependence in surge-precipitation and surge-discharge pairs. The models reproduce those dependencies, and the time lags between the flood drivers, rather well in north-western Europe, but less successfully in the southern part. Further, we identified several compound flood events in the reanalysis data. We were able to link most of those modelled events with historical reports of flood or storm losses. However, false positives and false negatives were also present in the reanalysis and several large compound floods were missed by the reanalysis. All in all, the study still shows that accurate representation of compound floods by independent models of each driver is possible, even if not yet achievable at every location.

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“…Similar approaches could be developed for assessing risk of other hazards. For example, for TCs, several models have been developed to generate synthetic TCs, such as the Synthetic Tropical Cyclone Generation Model (STORM; Bloemendaal et al, 2020), the MIT model (Emanuel and Nolan, 2004), or the Columbia Hazard (CHAZ) model (Lee et al, 2018). Such TC events could then be used to force global storm surge models, thereby also benefitting global coastal flood risk assessment.…”

Section: Hazardmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Methods are being developed at the global scale to assess both the statistical dependence among these hazards (e.g. Bevacqua et al, 2019;Couasnon et al, 2020) and their physical impacts in terms of hazard (Ikeuchi et al, 2017), with the step towards risk being the next logical one.…”

Section: Multi-hazard and Multi-riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review article: Natural hazard risk assessments at the global scale

Ward

Blauhut

Bloemendaal

et al. 2020

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

196

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Abstract. Since 1990, natural hazards have led to over 1.6 million fatalities globally, and economic losses are estimated at an average of around USD 260–310 billion per year. The scientific and policy communities recognise the need to reduce these risks. As a result, the last decade has seen a rapid development of global models for assessing risk from natural hazards at the global scale. In this paper, we review the scientific literature on natural hazard risk assessments at the global scale, and we specifically examine whether and how they have examined future projections of hazard, exposure, and/or vulnerability. In doing so, we examine similarities and differences between the approaches taken across the different hazards, and we identify potential ways in which different hazard communities can learn from each other. For example, there are a number of global risk studies focusing on hydrological, climatological, and meteorological hazards that have included future projections and disaster risk reduction measures (in the case of floods), whereas fewer exist in the peer-reviewed literature for global studies related to geological hazards. On the other hand, studies of earthquake and tsunami risk are now using stochastic modelling approaches to allow for a fully probabilistic assessment of risk, which could benefit the modelling of risk from other hazards. Finally, we discuss opportunities for learning from methods and approaches being developed and applied to assess natural hazard risks at more continental or regional scales. Through this paper, we hope to encourage further dialogue on knowledge sharing between disciplines and communities working on different hazards and risk and at different spatial scales.

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Higher probability of compound flooding from precipitation and storm surge in Europe under anthropogenic climate change

Cited by 353 publications

References 45 publications

Measuring compound flood potential from river discharge and storm surge extremes at the global scale

Measuring compound flood potential from river discharge and storm surge extremes at the global scale

Pan-European hydrodynamic models and their ability to identify compound floods

Review article: Natural hazard risk assessments at the global scale

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