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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

From a recent paper [wiley.com] in the journal Earth's Future [wiley.com]:

Heavy rainfall is increasing globally due to human‐caused global warming. However, it is still unclear how these increases in heavy rainfall might affect flood risk. In this paper, we investigate how global warming and population changes together may be affecting the number of people at risk from floods in the United States. We combine simulations from a climate model and flood model—allowing us to consider a wide range of heavy rainfall events. We report a ~20% increase in the size and a >200% increase in the frequency of very heavy and rare rainfall events, which leads to a ~30–127% increase in the number of people at risk from floods. Finally, we find that the heaviest rainfall events increase by the widest margin—suggesting the possibility of major increases in damage and disruption caused by severe floods in the 21st century.

The authors note the importance of updating the frequency and magnitude of these extreme events into the civil engineering plans and the need to reassess safety margins and emergency protocols for existing critical infrastructure.

D. L. Swain, O. E. J. Wing, P. D. Bates, et al.,Increased Flood Exposure Due to Climate Change and Population Growth in the United States, Earth's Future, 8, 11, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001778 [doi.org]

Original Submission