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Cited by 872Climate variability and modelsFlood Risk Assessment and ManagementMeteorological Phenomena and Simulations

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 30 of the 30 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000

Pall, Pardeep, Aina, Tolu, Stone, Dáithí A., Stott, Peter A., Nozawa, Toru, Hilberts, Arno G. J., Lohmann, Dag, Allen, Myles R.·2011·Nature
DOI 10.1038/nature09762
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Abstract

Interest in attributing the risk of damaging weather-related events to anthropogenic climate change is increasing. Yet climate models used to study the attribution problem typically do not resolve the weather systems associated with damaging events such as the UK floods of October and November 2000. Occurring during the wettest autumn in England and Wales since records began in 1766, these floods damaged nearly 10,000 properties across that region, disrupted services severely, and caused insured losses estimated at £1.3 billion (refs 5, 6). Although the flooding was deemed a 'wake-up call' to the impacts of climate change at the time, such claims are typically supported only by general thermodynamic arguments that suggest increased extreme precipitation under global warming, but fail to account fully for the complex hydrometeorology associated with flooding. Here we present a multi-step, physically based 'probabilistic event attribution' framework showing that it is very likely that global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk of flood occurrence in England and Wales in autumn 2000. Using publicly volunteered distributed computing, we generate several thousand seasonal-forecast-resolution climate model simulations of autumn 2000 weather, both under realistic conditions, and under conditions as they might have been had these greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting large-scale warming never occurred. Results are fed into a precipitation-runoff model that is used to simulate severe daily river runoff events in England and Wales (proxy indicators of flood events). The precise magnitude of the anthropogenic contribution remains uncertain, but in nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Pitt, M. The Pitt Review: Lessons Learned from the 2007 Floods (Cabinet Office, London, 2008)
  2. Massacand, A. C. Forecasting of Extreme Seasonal Precipitation: Insight into the ECMWF Potential (Technical Memorandum No. 415, ECMWF, 2003)
  3. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Report of the Conference of the Parties Serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol on its Second Session, held at Nairobi from 6 to17 November 2006 (FCCC/KP/CMP/2006/10, United Nations Office at Geneva, Geneva, 2007)

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Metadata

Authors
Pall, P., Aina, T., Stone, D. A., Stott, P. A., Nozawa, T., Hilberts, A. G. J., Lohmann, D., & Allen, M. R.
Affiliations
  • University of Oxford (GB)
  • Met Office (GB)
  • National Institute for Environmental Studies (JP)
  • Risk Management Solutions (United Kingdom) (GB)
Corresponding author
Pall, Pardeep
ORCID
Venue
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2011-02
Volume
470
Issue
7334
Pages
382-385
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
DOI
10.1038/nature09762
OpenAlex
W2060677109
Cited by
871
References
30
Citations by year
2026: 18 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 40 · 2023: 55 · 2022: 36 · 2021: 51 · 2020: 56 · 2019: 54 · 2018: 50 · 2017: 61 · 2016: 80 · 2015: 73 · 2014: 68 · 2013: 78 · 2012: 74
FWCI
70.05
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • CentAUR (University of Reading) (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
Natural Environment Research Council
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Flood Risk Assessment and Management
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
Keywords
anthropogenic climate change, flood risk, event attribution, greenhouse gas emissions, climate model simulation, rainfall-runoff modeling, river discharge, heavy rainfall, distributed computing, hydrometeorology, climate change impacts on floods
MeSH terms
Disasters, England, Human Activities, Models, Theoretical, Rain, Seasons, Wales, Greenhouse Effect, Risk Assessment, Rivers, Floods, Global Warming

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