Europe Flood Loss will Increase by 2050, Researchers Say

Damages caused by extreme floods in Europe will increase by the year 2050, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and colleagues found that both climate change and socioeconomic development will lead to a rise in flood-related economic losses. Also, increase in frequency of floods is expected to affect the entire Europe and not any isolated region.

At least a third of these flood-related losses will be due to climate change. The rest of the damage, according to researchers, will be due to the damage to  infrastructure.

The European Union faced economic losses worth some €4.9 billion or $6.7 billion a year between 2000 and 2012 due to flooding. The loss will increase to an average of €23.5 billion or $32 billion by the year 2050, researchers found.

Recent months have seen Britain being swamped by floodwater. According to the new study, events such as these would become more frequent by 2050; with one event every 16 years now to one in every 10 years in the future.

For the study, researchers used data collected since 1990 on the water flow levels of major European rivers. They found that the river system in Europe is highly inter-connected, New Scientist reported.

"The new study for the first time accounts for the correlation between floods in different countries. Current risk-assessment models assume that each river basin is independent. But in actuality, river flows across Europe are closely correlated, rising and falling in response to large-scale atmospheric patterns that bring rains and dry spells to large regions," said Brenden Jongman at the Institute for Environmental Studies in Amsterdam, one of the study authors.

"If the rivers are flooding in Central Europe, they are likely to also be flooding Eastern European regions," said Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler who is one of the study authors.

Hochrainer-Stigler added that the floods in the region will be a pan-European problem and would require funding from several countries.

"We need to be prepared for larger stress on risk financing mechanisms, such as the pan-European Solidarity Fund (EUSF), a financial tool for financing disaster recovery in the European Union," Hochrainer-Stigler added in a news release.

The study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Europe isn't the only region that will be facing extreme weather events due to climate change. Previous research has shown that East Asia will see an increase in catastrophic cyclones in the future.

Related research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, had reported that climate change may lead to Hawaii experiencing frequent hurricanes in the next few years.