Where and when will the next record-breaking precipitation disaster occur?

Climate change increases the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation over most of the global land, and flood impacts associated with extreme precipitation lead to major damage to society, economy, and ecosystems. Record-high precipitation events are particularly relevant for impacts since they are by definition more severe than any historical event, and can thus lead to unforeseeable damage. Both the probability of breaking local records in our real climate as well as the preparedness of local society for record-high events is dependent on the observed extreme event history. Here, we estimate local extreme precipitation disaster potential, the potential for record-high precipitation to occur and cause a high-impact disaster, conditional on historical observations. Based on two observational datasets and reanalysis, we find that natural variability strongly shapes the global pattern of future conditional record breaking probabilities, highlighting that any region can be subject to high disaster potential if its current record value happens to be low. Climate change modifies this pattern in a non-linear manner: while climate change according to the SSP2-4.5 scenario increases the average probability of breaking a record by 2050 about 1.4 times, high (more rare) current records are much more sensitive to climate change, featuring an up to 2.5 times increase in record breaking probabilities by 2050. In other words: regions with low current records are most at risk, but for regions with high current records climate change increases the risk at the highest rate. Disaster potential is further increased by low preparedness related to disaster memory: the longer ago the last record-breaking event, the more likely that local society is unaware of and underprepared for the risk. High disaster potential regions are dispersed globally but hotspots appear in Australia and in particularly vulnerable regions in the tropics and South-East Asia. Vulnerability and exposure in many of these regions is high due to poverty and rapid urbanisation, associated with adaptation gaps, resulting in a major, imminent threat.