The Economic Costs of Extreme Weather: Case Studies from New Zealand.
Abstract
The science of `extreme weather event attribution' has developed rapidly in the past decade and a half. In that time many studies have been made of aspects of the meteorological events themselves, but more recently attention has begun to shift towards also quantifying the impacts that those events have on human and natural systems. The work presented here uses analyses of extreme rainfall, and related implications for flooding, to better understand the impact of human climate influence on the associated financial damages. Potential implications for other sectors such as insurance and water management are also discussed. Model simulations of New Zealand from the `weather@home ANZ' regional climate modelling project are used to gain a nationwide view of attributable changes in extreme rainfall to date, together with projections for the future. Metrics are computed to investigate how unevenly New Zealand's rainfall falls in time, and how that is anticipated to change. Some but not all regions of New Zealand might expect to see increases in damaging extreme rainfall and the north of the country potentially stands to witness clearer changes to how its rainfall is delivered, with consequent implications for water resource planning. Whilst results are shown for New Zealand, the research aims to help advance methods for quantifying climate impacts that should have more general applicability in other regions of the world also.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMGC090..06R
- Keywords:
-
- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1637 Regional climate change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4313 Extreme events;
- NATURAL HAZARDS