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A new study has predicted that global flooding incidence could increase by 49 per cent between 2020 and 2100 if the world continues to follow the ominous path of emitting greenhouse gases en route development.
The biggest increase in flooding incidence is projected to be around coastlines in tropical Africa and Asia, and in arid North Africa.
The North Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts, as well as southeastern Asia and the Pacific Islands are likely to see the most pronounced effects, the paper published in Water Resources Research noted.
“With the highest resolution results produced to date, we hope industries will derive value from our model for a range of additional use cases, such as protecting critical infrastructure from future flooding, helping insurers price premiums and meeting the requirements of climate regulations,” study’s co-author Paul Bates, professor of Hydrology at the University of Bristol Cabot Institute for the Environment was quoted in a statement.
The study highlighted that it is important to note that previously used flood maps based on computer models were not very accurate at simulating the behaviour of real floods.
So the team applied new techniques to gain more insights into how much water we need to put into the model for a given flood probability.
Bates and colleagues created a Global Flood Map (GFM), considering events induced by rains, rivers and sea level rise.
They used models to calculate the projected changes in rainfall, river discharge, and sea levels at a given level of warming.
They then adjusted the probabilities of a given magnitude of flood accordingly.
The analysis showed that flood risk for 2050 is seven per cent and 15 per cent if emissions are kept low and high, respectively.
“It is important to note that these global averages result from predicted changes in hazards that have large geographical variations. Some places will see their flood risk fall, whilst for others the increases will be many times larger than the global average even under a lower emissions scenario,” lead author Oliver Wing, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Bristol Cabot Institute for the Environment and Chief Research Officer at Fathom, was quoted.
Further, the study highlighted that the world may witness a consistent and large change in coastal flood hazard globally. It is expected to almost double, increasing by 99 per cent by 2100 even in a low emissions scenario.
This is because the mean ocean temperature will continue to increase even after global surface air temperature has stopped climbing. This causes the water to expand, leading to an increase in sea levels.
Also, river-triggered flooding is likely to occur in sub-Saharan Africa, southern, eastern, and southeastern Asia, and South America.
Meanwhile, rainfall-induced flooding hazards appear to intensify and are especially vulnerable to human-caused climate change. They are likely to increase by six per cent by 2100 in a low emissions scenario, and 44 per cent in a high emissions model, the study highlighted.