Climate change impacts on the water cycle, resources and quality



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Figure 2. Change in recurrence of 100-year floods, based on comparisons between today’s climate and water use (1961-1990) and simulations for the 2020s and 2070s (ECHAM4 and HadCM3 climate models and Baseline-A water use scenario). Values calculated with WaterGAP 2.1. (from Lehner et al., 2006).
Flood risk assessment

Flood risk assessment requires the integration of the physical impact results (inundation extent and depth) with information on flood defences (including probability of failure), land use, and impact (depth-damage functions and population data). Monetary assessments of the impacts of climate change on floods in Europe have been poorly covered. Hall et al. (2005) present a national-scale assessment of current and future coastal and river flood risk in England and Wales. Their results indicate an up to 20-fold increase in real terms economic risk by the 2080s for the scenario with the highest economic growth. A study by the Association of British Insurers reports similar findings, with a 15-fold increase in flood risk by 2080 under the high emission scenario (ABI, 2005).


At the Institute of Environment and Sustainability of the Joint Research Centre, an integrated methodology is being developed to assess current and future flood risk at the European scale. The framework is presented in Figure 3. Within the PESETA project, the methodology was applied in two pilot catchments. For the Upper Danube, the potential damage of a 100-year flood is estimated to rise by ~40% for the high emission scenario (IPCC-SRES scenario A2) and ~19% for the low emission scenario (B2) by the 2080s. The number of people affected is projected to increase by 242,000 (~11%) for the A2, and 135,000 (~6%) for the B2 scenario. For the Meuse, the potential damage of a 100-year flood is estimated to rise by ~14% for the A2 scenario and ~11% for the B2 scenario. For both scenarios, the estimated increase in number of people affected is approximately 4% (Feyen et al., 2006).




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