Articles | Volume 24, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-375-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-375-2024
Research article
 | 
05 Feb 2024
Research article |  | 05 Feb 2024

Current and future rainfall-driven flood risk from hurricanes in Puerto Rico under 1.5 and 2 °C climate change

Leanne Archer, Jeffrey Neal, Paul Bates, Emily Vosper, Dereka Carroll, Jeison Sosa, and Daniel Mitchell

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This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS).
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Cited articles

Aldridge, T., Gunawan, O., Moore, R. J., Cole, S. J., Boyce, G., and Cowling, R.: Developing an impact library for forecasting surface water flood risk, J. Flood Risk Manage., 13, e12641, https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12641, 2020. 
Allen, A., Zilbert Soto, L., Wesely, J., Belkow, T., Ferro, V., Lambert, R., Langdown, I., and Samanamú, A.: From state agencies to ordinary citizens: reframing risk-mitigation investments and their impact to disrupt urban risk traps in Lima, Peru, Environ. Urban., 29, 477–502, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247817706061, 2017. 
Archer, L., Neal, J., Bates, P., Vosper, E., Carroll, D., Sosa, J., and Mitchell, D.: Puerto Rico Probability of Flood Inundation Maps, University of Bristol Data Repository [data set], https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.2qtinf5lw52u52snyl5ruwekef, 2023. 
Arnell, N. W. and Gosling, S. N.: The impacts of climate change on river flood risk at the global scale, Climatic Change, 134, 387–401, https://doi.org/10.1007/S10584-014-1084-5, 2016. 
Audi, C., Segarra, L., Irwin, C., Craig, P., Skelton, C., and Bestul, N.: Ascertainment of the Estimated Excess Mortality from Hurricane María in Puerto Rico, Washington, DC, https://publichealth.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs4586/files/2023-06/acertainment-of-the-estimated-excess-mortality-from-hurricane (last access: 1 February 2024), 2018. 
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We model hurricane-rainfall-driven flooding to assess how the number of people exposed to flooding changes in Puerto Rico under the 1.5 and 2 °C Paris Agreement goals. Our analysis suggests 8 %–10 % of the population is currently exposed to flooding on average every 5 years, increasing by 2 %–15 % and 1 %–20 % at 1.5 and 2 °C. This has implications for adaptation to more extreme flooding in Puerto Rico and demonstrates that 1.5 °C climate change carries a significant increase in risk.
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