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China’s Escalating Flood Costs: Massive Economic Loss for Every Half-degree of Climate Warming

Year: 2021

Type: article

Abstract: lobally, an increase in the severity of flood impacts has been observed in recent years on scales from local to regional and beyond.That trend is projected to continue in the future as the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation increases in response to a warming planet, exacerbated in some cases by changes in socioeconomic systems.However, a number of studies demonstrate that projections of flood hazard and flood risk are highly uncertain; there can be large differences between results obtained by using different scenarios and different climate and impact models.Since climate models generate differing projections, ensembles of general circulation models (GCMs) are used.Ensembles, together with the process of downscaling (empiricalstatistical, or dynamic), can explain a major portion of the differences in impact projections.Since climate models do not satisfactorily simulate the historical climate, a bias correction is often necessary, and is Adapted from "Each 0.5° of Warming Increases Annual Flood Losses in China by More than US$60 Billion," by

Source: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

DOI: 10.1175/bams-d-19-0182.a