Recent nationwide climate change impact assessments of natural hazards in Japan and East Asia

Abstract

Climate change due to global warming is expected to have major impacts on phenomena such as tropical cyclones (TCs), Baiu, precipitation, and seasonal storms. Many natural disasters in East Asia are driven by TC (typhoon) activity in particular and their associated hazards are sensitive to local-scale characteristics. As such, it is critically important to numerically simulate TC activity (and other phenomenon) on local scales in order to properly assess climate change impacts on natural hazards in the region. In addition, projecting future changes of many TC-related hazards and/or their potential economic impacts can be challenging due to their low occurrence frequencies in any one particular area. With these views in mind, a collaborative research program was formed in Japan to project long-term changes in natural hazards in Japan and East Asia based on local-scale and large-ensemble numerical experiments. This paper reviews recent climate change impact assessments (written in both English and Japanese) from the program and summarizes the projected future changes in precipitation, river flooding, and coastal hazards, and their associated economic impacts.

Keywords

• Global warming
• Natural disasters
• Impact assessment
• Downscaling
• Extreme events
• Heavy precipitation