The occurrence of more frequent extreme climate and weather events in the context of climate change has aroused extensive concern of global society. It has posed a great challenge for global sustainable development. The study of climate change impacts on flood disaster is an important part of overall climate change impacts research which would promote the scientific understanding towards the effects of changing environment. Meanwhile, it is also of great significance for flood risk reduction. In this paper, the advances in the study of climate change impacts on flood disaster are reviewed with special focus on the latest research progress in the fields of meteorology, hydrology and disaster risk research. To gain a systematic view of climate change impacts on flood, the review is carried out with analyses of three important components of flood disaster system, i.e. extreme precipitation, extreme discharge and flood loss, and the detection, projection and attribution of changes in these three elements are specifically summarized in terms of current research methods and major findings. Then, existing problems in present studies and future research directions with regard to this issue are discussed. It is proposed that in order to promote the research in this field, the development and accumulation of better datasets, the improvement in the coupling of climate and hydrological models, the implement of flood vulnerability dynamic assessment should be given more attention. In addition, the efforts to integrate the analysis of flood hazard process and flood loss and conduct interdisciplinary researches should be the emphases of future work.