Humanity should prepare for serious flooding

2018-01-11 11:38

Humanity should prepare for serious flooding
Recently, the power of the flood increased, and together with the increased volume of property and the proportion of the population exposed to the risk from them.

Sign up for news “UkrMedia” in Facebook, Twitter or Google+

The floods caused by the river flooding, the most common and most devastating natural phenomenon in the world, according to the report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, reports Rus.Media. Recently, the power of the flood increased, and together with the increased volume of property and the proportion of the population exposed to the risk from them. However, this is not directly related to human casualties and direct damage to property — on the contrary, they decrease from the 1990-ies, due to effective protection measures.

Flood with return period 100 years are classified as particularly dangerous or catastrophic. According to projections, global warming will cause floods threaten more than currently, the number of people. The researchers assessed, as shown by the trend in different regions of the planet, and found out how we need to strengthen measures to protect from flooding.

To calculate the conditions that cause floods, the researchers were launched in various combinations 10 global hydrological models, five global climate models and four scenarios of greenhouse gas concentrations changes, as well as the behavior model of the river channel for two time periods: the historical period 1971-2004 years and the period of the future — 2035-2044. The main indicator of the annual maximum daily flow of water in rivers depends on the hydrological characteristics and from climate change — primarily rainfall. The results have been adjusted for observational data for various regions of the world.

The largest maximum day water consumption was calculated the rise of water in the river channel, which allowed to calculate the area of a hypothetically flooded areas and the number of people caught in the disaster area. For comparison, the researchers chose those floods, which included coverage of the population in the top tenth of all floods in a given time period, the researchers obtained the number of people affected in 10% of the strongest floods in the study area.

Scientists have found that the threat of severe flooding will increase especially for the densely populated suburbs of Shanghai, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Mexico, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Cairo, while the prices will remain relatively safe. Hydrological situation in the next 30 years will significantly worsen in the basins of major rivers — the Niger, Zambezi, Nile, and Yangtze.

The greatest concern of researchers is causing the Asian region, as it has the highest risks of catastrophic floods to date, and also the strongest increase in the risk of exit of the water element out of control in the future. For example, in one Pakistan, the number of people living in hazardous areas will increase, according to scientists, from 6 to 11 million people. Changes will also affect Europe: threat in terms of a flood will be the coast of Germany and Poland, as well as the French territory, by which their waters are rhône, Loire and Seine.

Measures for flood protection that include the necessary infrastructure, public notification, insurance schemes and other economic factors will need to be applied in almost all regions, though to varying degrees. Conventionally, in the state of Illinois is to raise the level of protection by three points, and in France — need-on-one.

The researchers emphasize that in order to avoid undesirable climate change and containment of flooding need to adhere to the Paris agreements.

The article was published in the journal Science Advances.