Econometric evaluation of large weather events due to climate change: floods in Atlantic Canada
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Date
2018
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
According to the 5th Annual Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change will increase the frequency of large weather events such as floods, storm surges, cyclones, hurricanes, high speed winds, thunderstorms, snowstorms, blizzards, extreme temperatures and others. All these events lead to a significant economic damage to property, infrastructure and human health. Historically Atlantic Canada has been vulnerable to flooding. Destructive consequences of the flooding have been seen in the past and are expected to occur in the future specifically as a result of ongoing climate change. The ultimate goal of this study is to establish a relationship between socio-economic, climate change as well as direct flood factors and economic loss from floods in Atlantic Canada. As the first step in reaching this goal, the present study evaluates probability of floods in Atlantic Canada due to hydrological as well as climatological factors first and then tests the hypothesis of an increasing frequency of floods in the future due to climate change. Comprehensive statistical analysis performed in this study is based on the data collected from Canadian Disaster Database, Database of Environmental Departments and Local Governments of Maritime Provinces of Canada and Statistics Canada.