The number of people harmed by floods will double worldwide by 2030, a new analysis shows.
The World Resources Institute, a global research group, found that 147 million people would be hit by floods from rivers and coasts annually by the end of the decade, compared with 72 million people just 10 years ago.
Damages to urban property will soar from US$174 billion to US$712 billion per year.
By 2050, “the numbers will be catastrophic,” the report said. A total of 221 million people would be at risk, with the toll in cities costing US$1.7 trillion yearly.
When the institute first developed its flood modeling tool in 2014, the predictions felt “like a fantasy,” institute director of water initiatives Charlie Iceland said.
“But now we’re actually seeing this increase in magnitude of the damages in real time,” Iceland said. “We’ve never seen these types of floods before.”
Floods are getting worse because of the climate crisis, decisions to populate high-risk areas and land sinkage from the overuse of groundwater.
The worst flooding would come in South Asia and Southeast Asia, including in Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia, and China, where large populations are vulnerable.
The effects would be less dire, but still increasingly serious, in the US, where the risk is highest for coastal flooding.
The US ranks third among countries with the most to lose from urban coastal flooding in the next 10 years, after China and Indonesia.
Coastal flood damage in the US would soar from US$1.8 billion in 2010 to US$38 billion in 2050, with half the country’s exposed population in just three states — Louisiana, Massachusetts and Florida.
What are now once in a lifetime floods could become daily occurrences for most of the US coastline, according to a separate study.
That is because hurricanes are stronger, seas are higher and rain patterns are changing, all because of global warming caused by humans.
River floods would worsen in the US, but those damages would remain about the same, as large investments would be made in flood protection.
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