Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Future property damage from flooding: sensitivities to economy and climate change

  • Letter
  • Published:
Climatic Change Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Recent trends in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events have raised the concern that climate change could increase flooding risks and property damage. However, a major challenge in attributing and projecting changes in disaster risk is that damage is influenced not only by the physical climate hazard, but also by non-climatic factors that shape exposure and vulnerability. Recent assessments of integrated disaster risk have been hampered by the paucity of literature analyzing local-scale interactions between hazard, exposure and vulnerability in the historical record. Here we develop an integrated empirical analysis of historical flood damage that emphasizes spatial and temporal heterogeneity in flood hazard, economic exposure and social vulnerability. Using the Midwestern United States as a testbed, we show that annual property damage from flooding is projected to increase by 13 to 17.4 % over the next two decades. At the state level, over half of the increase is driven by projected growth in housing units. However, at the county level, the dominant factor causing future damage varies, emphasizing the value of a fully integrated, spatially and temporally resolved approach to assessing flooding risk and control strategies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ashfaq M, Bowling LC, Cherkauer K, Pal JS, Diffenbaugh NS (2010) Influence of climate model biases and daily-scale temperature and precipitation events on hydrological impacts assessment: a case study of the United States. J Geophys Res-Atmos 115(D14), D14116. doi:10.1029/2009JD012965

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ashfaq M, Ghosh S, Kao S-C, Bowling LC, Mote P, Touma D, Rauscher SA, Diffenbaugh NS (2013) Near-term acceleration of hydroclimatic change in the Western U.S. J Geophys Res-Atmos 118(19):10676–10693. doi:10.1002/jgrd.50816

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bouwer LM (2013) Projections of future extreme weather losses under changes in climate and exposure. Risk Anal 33(5):915–930. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2012.01880.x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Changnon SA, Pielke RA, Changnon D, Sylves RT, Pulwarty R (2000) Human factors explain the increased losses from weather and climate extremes. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 81(3):437–442

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cramer W, Yohe GW, Auffhammer M, Huggel C, Molau U, Dias MAFS, Leemans R (2014) Detection and attribution of observed impacts. In: Climate climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Cambridge University Press. http://library.wur.nl/WebQuery/wurpubs/483086.

  • Diffenbaugh NS, Pal JS, Trapp RJ, Giorgi F (2005) Fine-scale processes regulate the response of extreme events to global climate change. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 102(44):15774–15778. doi:10.1073/pnas.0506042102

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diffenbaugh NS, Swain DL, Touma D (2015) Anthropogenic warming has increased drought risk in California. Proc Natl Acad Sci 112(13):3931–3936. doi:10.1073/pnas.1422385112

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giorgi F, Im E-S, Coppola E, Diffenbaugh NS, Gao XJ, Mariotti L, Shi Y (2011) Higher hydroclimatic intensity with global warming. J Clim 24(20):5309–5324. doi:10.1175/2011JCLI3979.1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute (2013) The Spatial hazard events and losses database for the United States, version 12.0 [online database]. University of South Carolina, Columbia. Available from http://www.sheldus.org. Accessed December 2013

  • Huggel C, Stone D, Auffhammer M, Hansen G (2013) Loss and damage attribution. Nat Clim Chang 3(8):694–696. doi:10.1038/nclimate1961

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2013) Climate change 2013: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. In: Long-term climate change: projections, commitments and irreversibility. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge

  • IPCC (2014) Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: global and sectoral aspects. Contribution of working group II to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1132 pp

    Google Scholar 

  • Jongman B, Ward PJ, Aerts JCJH (2012) Global exposure to river and coastal flooding: long term trends and changes. Glob Environ Chang 22(4):823–835. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.07.004

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knutson TR, McBride JL, Chan J, Emanuel K, Holland G, Landsea C, Held I, Kossin JP, Srivastava AK, Sugi M (2010) Tropical cyclones and climate change. Nat Geosci 3(3):157–163. doi:10.1038/ngeo779

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mallakpour I, Villarini G (2015) The changing nature of flooding across the Central United States. Nat Clim Chang 5(3):250–254. doi:10.1038/nclimate2516

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mechler R, Bouwer LM (2014) Understanding trends and projections of disaster losses and climate change: is vulnerability the missing link? Clim Chang 1–13. doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1141-0

  • Mendelsohn R, Emanuel K, Chonabayashi S, Bakkensen L (2012) The impact of climate change on global tropical cyclone damage. Nat Clim Chang 2(3):205–209. doi:10.1038/nclimate1357

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson TC, Heim RR, Hirsch R, Kaiser DP, Brooks H, Diffenbaugh NS, Dole RM et al (2013) Monitoring and understanding changes in heat waves, cold waves, floods, and droughts in the United States: state of knowledge. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 94(6):821–834. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00066.1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pielke RA (2007) Future economic damage from tropical cyclones: sensitivities to societal and climate changes. Philos Trans R Soc A Math Phys Eng Sci 365(1860):2717–2729. doi:10.1098/rsta.2007.2086

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Romero-Lankao P, Smith JB, Davidson DJ, Diffenbaugh NS, Kinney PL, Kirshen P, Kovacs P, Villers-Ruiz L (2014) Chapter 26: North America. In: Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part B: regional aspects. Contribution of working group II to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 1439–1498

    Google Scholar 

  • Touma D, Ashfaq M, Nayak MA, Kao S-C, Diffenbaugh NS (2015) A multi-model and multi-index evaluation of drought characteristics in the 21st century. J Hydrol. doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2014.12.011

    Google Scholar 

  • Wooldridge JM (2010) Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. 2nd edition. MIT Press

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Program on Integrated Assessment Model Development, Diagnostics, and Intercomparison (PIAMDDI) funded by the US DOE, award No. DE-SC0005171-001. Research conducted at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was supported by the Regional and Global Climate Modeling Program funded by the DOE office of science. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University, 403 W State St., West Lafayette, IN, 47907-2056, USA

    Jing Liu, Thomas W. Hertel & Michael S. Delgado

  2. Department of Earth System Science and Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Noah S. Diffenbaugh

  3. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Moetasim Ashfaq

Authors
  1. Jing Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Thomas W. Hertel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Noah S. Diffenbaugh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Michael S. Delgado
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Moetasim Ashfaq
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jing Liu.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

ESM 1

(PDF 403 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Liu, J., Hertel, T.W., Diffenbaugh, N.S. et al. Future property damage from flooding: sensitivities to economy and climate change. Climatic Change 132, 741–749 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1478-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1478-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation