Regional tropical cyclone impact functions for globally consistent risk assessments

作者：Samuel Eberenz, Samuel Lüthi, David N. Bresch · 发表于：Natural hazards and earth system sciences · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.5194/nhess-21-393-2021 · 被引用次数：87 · 研究领域：Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones Research、Climate variability and models、Flood Risk Assessment and Management

Assessing the adverse impacts caused by tropical cyclones has become increasingly important as both climate change and human coastal development increase the damage potential. In order to assess tropical cyclone risk, direct economic damage is frequently modeled based on hazard intensity, asset exposure, and vulnerability, the latter represented by impact functions. In this study, we show that assessing tropical cyclone risk on a global level with one single impact function calibrated for the USA – which is a typical approach in many recent studies – is problematic, biasing the simulated damage by as much as a factor of 36 in the north West Pacific. Thus, tropical cyclone risk assessments should always consider regional differences in vulnerability, too. This study proposes a calibrated model to adequately assess tropical cyclone risk in different regions by fitting regional impact functions based on reported damage data. Applying regional calibrated impact functions within the risk modeling framework CLIMADA (CLIMate ADAptation) at a resolution of 10 km worldwide, we find global annual average direct damage caused by tropical cyclones to range from USD 51 up to USD 121 billion (value in 2014, 1980–2017) with the largest uncertainties in the West Pacific basin where the calibration results are the least robust. To better understand the challenges in the West Pacific and to complement the global perspective of this study, we explore uncertainties and limitations entailed in th...