Changes in flood damage with global warming on the eastern coast of Spain

Maria Cortès*, Marco Turco, Philip Ward, Josep A. Sánchez-Espigares, Lorenzo Alfieri, Maria Carmen Llasat

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Flooding is one of the main natural hazards in the world and causes huge economic and human impacts. Assessing the flood damage in the Mediterranean region is of great importance, especially because of its large vulnerability to climate change. Most past floods affecting the region were caused by intense precipitation events; thus the analysis of the links between precipitation and flood damage is crucial. The main objective of this paper is to estimate changes in the probability of damaging flood events with global warming of 1.5, 2 and 3°C above pre-industrial levels and taking into account different socioeconomic scenarios in two western Mediterranean regions, namely Catalonia and the Valencian Community. To do this, we analyse the relationship between heavy precipitation and flood-damage estimates from insurance datasets in those two regions. We consider an ensemble of seven regional climate model (RCM) simulations spanning the period 1976-2100 to evaluate precipitation changes and to drive a logistic model that links precipitation and flood-damage estimates, thus deriving statistics under present and future climates. Furthermore, we incorporate population projections based on five different socioeconomic scenarios. The results show a general increase in the probability of a damaging event for most of the cases and in both regions of study, with larger increments when higher warming is considered. Moreover, this increase is higher when both climate and population change are included. When population is considered, all the periods and models show a clearly higher increase in the probability of damaging events, which is statistically significant for most of the cases. Our findings highlight the need for limiting global warming as much as possible as well as the importance of including variables that consider change in both climate and socioeconomic conditions in the analysis of flood damage.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2855-2877
Number of pages23
JournalNatural Hazards and Earth System Sciences
Volume19
Issue number12
Early online date18 Dec 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2019

Funding

Acknowledgements. This work has been supported by the Spanish project M-CostAdapt (CTM2017-83655-C2-R) of the FEDER/Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities – AEI – for the project EFA210/16/PIRAGUA, INTERREG POCTEFA 2014-2020, and for the Water Research Institute (IdRA) of the University of Barcelona. It was conducted under the framework of the HyMeX programme (Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean eXperiment) and the Panta Rhei WG Changes in Flood Risk. Philip Ward received funding from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NOW) in the form of VIDI grant 016.161.324. Marco Turco has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 740073 (CLIM4CROP project) and from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the project PRED-FIRE (RTI2018-099711-J-I00).

FundersFunder number
European Union’s Horizon 2020CLIM4CROP
FEDER/Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities AEICTM2017-83655-C2-R
FEDER/Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities – AEIEFA210/16/PIRAGUA
Now016.161.324
Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and UniversitiesRTI2018-099711-J-I00
Alberta Water Research Institute
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme740073
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
Universitat de Barcelona

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