Extreme Events If climate change follows projected scenarios, changes in temperatures and weather patterns will affect the frequency of rain and snowfall and the severity of droughts and floods. Extreme variability of precipitation is expected to place 2.8 billion people at risk of water shortages. Developing countries will be disproportionately affected by erratic and extreme weather, given their more limited resources for undertaking adaptations and their limited capacity for regulating the flows of rivers and streams.  |  | |
The effect of climate change on stream flow and groundwater recharge varies regionally and among different climate-change scenarios, but most of these scenarios show increases in annual mean stream flow in high latitudes and Southeast Asia, and decreases in Central Asia, the Mediterranean, Southern Africa, and Australia. They also suggest that the amplitude and frequency of extreme precipitation events will increase over many areas; floods and droughts will become more common and the Asian summer monsoon precipitation more variable. Key Challenges
In least developed economies, extreme droughts and floods can have catastrophic social and economic impacts, with tragic losses of life and declines in annual GDP often exceeding 10 percent. Most seriously affected are poor farmers in vulnerable and marginal production systems. World Bank Response
The World Bank has adopted a climate-risk-management approach to development, which calls for making development resilient to both present-day weather variability and projected climate change. It supports adaptation investments that reduce the damage from climate change and yield net benefits that are competitive with those of alternative development projects. These investments include flood management plans and drought-mitigation planning. The Bank’s regional teams are increasingly working on climate change adaptation in water-related investment projects in order to manage the risks associated with climate change.  |
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