Flooding in Somerset, England, January 2023
Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Modeling studies show that annual flood costs in some parts of the UK increase by 25% even under the best-case climate scenario.
Paul Bates and Oliver Wing at the University of Bristol, UK, and their colleagues built a climate model that simulates surface water flow and used it to estimate the We have estimated the amount of flooding that the UK experiences.
They estimated the potential cost of flood damage based on insurance data on property values in areas currently and potentially at risk from flooding. “Unfortunately, quantifying the impact often requires pounds and dollars,” says Wing. “Flooding could mean severe mental health impacts, but these impacts are more difficult to estimate.”
The team estimates that flooding now causes £740m in damage in the UK each year, a 1.4% increase since 1990.
The world is now on track to reach the goal of reaching 2.5°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
However, if countries achieve their emissions cuts on time and global temperatures rise by only 1.8°C above pre-industrial levels, the researchers found that the average annual amount of flood damage in the UK would be lower than in 1990. We found that it increased by only 4% when
“It’s a fairly modest increase,” says Bates. But the figures mask the fact that some parts of the country face much more severe flooding than others, he says. A 25% increase in flood damage would also occur in a warming scenario, Bates said.
However, the team found that if promised cuts are not met, global temperatures could rise and more flood damage could occur in the UK. A warming of 2.5°C is projected to increase average annual flood damage in the UK by 13%. If global temperature rises he 3.3°C, it will rise by 23%.
Rising temperatures also mean that extreme flood years are likely to become more extreme and cause more damage. At 3.3°C of warming, such a year would be 40% more damaging than what is currently considered a once-in-a-century event.
The areas of the country that face the greatest risk of flood damage in the future are those that face the greatest risk today, says Bates. These include South East England, North West England, South Wales and Central Scotland.
Bates says the study says the UK must take a leading role in ensuring countries don’t break their climate pledges. “We need to make sure that the COP26 and net-zero pledges signed by various countries are actually implemented,” he says.
“This is an impressive study using the best models available to the insurance industry and carefully validated against the observed floods,” said Jim Hall of the University of Oxford.
“The risk of flooding in the UK is on the rise due to climate change impacts that are already ‘trapped’ in carbon emissions in the atmosphere today. Without aggressive mitigation of our carbon footprint, the situation will worsen over the course of this century,” he said.
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