Abstract
Recent floods have become more abundant and more destructive than ever in many regions of the globe. Destructive floods observed in the 1990s all over the world have led to record-high material damage, with total losses exceeding one billion US dollars in each of two dozen events. The immediate question emerges as to the extent to which a sensible rise in flood hazard and vulnerability can be linked to climate variability and change. Links between climate change and floods have found extensive coverage in the Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since the material on floods is scattered over many places of two large volumes of the TAR, the present contribution - a guided tour to floods in the IPCC TAR – may help a reader notice the different angles from which floods were considered in the IPCC report. As the water-holding capacity of the atmosphere grows with temperature, the potential for intensive precipitation also increases. Higher and more intense precipitation has been already observed and this trend is expected to increase in the future, warmer world. This is a sufficient condition for flood hazard to increase. Yet there are also other, non-climatic, factors exacerbating flood hazard. According to the IPCC TAR, the analysis of extreme events in both observations and coupled models is underdeveloped. It is interesting that the perception of floods in different parts of the TAR is largely different. Large uncertainty is emphasized in the parts dealing with the science of climate change, but in the impact chapters, referring to sectors and regions, growth in flood risk is taken for granted. Floods have been identified on short lists of key regional concerns.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andrade, R. F. S., Schellnhuber, H. J., and Claussen, M.: 1998, Analysis of rainfall records: possible relation to self-organized criticality, Physica A 254, 257.
Arnell, N. W.: 1999, Climate change and global water resources, Global Environmental Change 9, S31–S49.
Berz, G.: 2001, Climatic change: Effects on and possible responses by the insurance industry, In: J. L. Lozán, H. Graßl and P. Hupfer (eds), Climate of the 21st Century: Changes and Risks, Office: Wissenschaftliche Auswertungen, Hamburg, pp. 392–399.
Chiew, F. H. S. and McMahon, T. A.: 1993, Detection of trend and change in annual flows of Australian rivers, Int. J. Climatol. 13, 643–653.
IFRCRCS (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies): 1997, World Disasters Report 1997, Oxford University Press.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change): 2001, J. T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D. J. Griggs, M. Nouger, P. J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell, and C. A. Johnson (eds), Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Contribution of the Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 881 pp.
IPCC: 2001a, J. J. McCarthy, O. F. Canziani, N. A. Leary, D. J. Dokken, and K. S. White (eds), Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of the Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1032 pp.
Kundzewicz, Z. W.: 2001, Water problems of Central and Eastern Europe — A region in transition, Hydrol. Sci. J. 46, 883–896.
Kundzewicz, Z.W.: 2002, Non-structural flood protection and sustainability, Water International 27, 3–13.
Kundzewicz, Z. W. and Kaczmarek, Z.: 2000, Coping with hydrological extremes, Water International 25, 66–75.
Kundzewicz, Z.W. and Robson, A. (ed.): 2000, Detecting Trend and Other Changes in Hydrological Data, World Climate Programme — Water, World Climate Programme Data and Monitoring, WCDMP-45, WMO/TD — No. 1013, Geneva, May 2000.
Kundzewicz, Z. W., Szamalek, K., and Kowalczak, P.: 1999, The great flood of 1997 in Poland, Hydrol. Sci. J. 44, 855–870.
Kundzewicz, Z. W. and Takeuchi, K.: 1999, Flood protection and management: Quo vadimus?, Hydrol. Sci. J. 44, 417–432.
Milly, P. C. D., Wetherald, R. T., Dunne, K. A., and Delworth, T. L.: 2002, Increasing risk of great floods in a changing climate, Nature 415, 514–517.
Munich Re: 1997, Flooding and Insurance, Munich Re, Munich, Germany.
Palmer, T. N. and Räisänen, J.: 2002, Quantifying the risk of extreme seasonal precipitation events in a changing climate, Nature 415, 512–514.
Parry, M. L. (ed.): 2000, Assessment of Potential Effects and Adaptations for Climate Change in Europe: The Europe ACACIA Project, Jackson Environment Institute, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom, 324 pp.
Schnur, R.: 2002, The investment forecast, Nature 415, 483–484.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kundzewicz, Z.W., Schellnhuber, HJ. Floods in the IPCC TAR Perspective. Natural Hazards 31, 111–128 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:NHAZ.0000020257.09228.7b
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:NHAZ.0000020257.09228.7b