On August 23rd, a group of climate scientists issued its preliminary assessment of the role of climate change in the devastating floods that killed more than 220 people in Germany and Belgium last month
IN A YEAR scarred by one extreme weather event after the next, the question of how far climate change is to blame has continually come to the fore. On August 23rd a group of climate scientists issued its preliminary assessment of the role of climate change in the devastating floods that killed more than 220 people in Germany and Belgium last month. The researchers estimate that global warming has made such extraordinary rainfall up to nine times as likely as in the pre-industrial age.
But what role might climate change have played? Climate-modelling studies had already warned that western and central Europe would experience more pluvial and river flooding as accumulating greenhouse gases continue to push global average temperatures upwards.
In mid-July, unusually heavy rain fell on top of already wet terrain, making the flooding more severe. Around the Ahr and Erft rivers in Germany, for instance, 93mm bucketed down in a single day; in Belgium, around the Meuse, 106mm fell in two days. They found that climate change made the kind of extreme rainfall recorded in July between 1.2 and nine times as likely as in the hypothetical unwarmed world. The modelling also found that climate change has increased the amount of rain that can fall in one day in Western Europe by 3-19%. Running the models in another hypothetical world that is 0.8°C warmer than today’s increased the chances of an event further still, by 1.2-1.4 times.
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