Record rainfall leading to flooding that killed 24 people in Europe earlier this month was twice as likely due to human-caused climate change, a study has found.
The flooding took place across central Europe after Storm Boris stalled over the region from Sept. 12 to Monday last week, inundating Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany with the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in some areas and affecting almost 2 million people.
“Our study has found the fingerprints of climate change in the blasts of rainfall that flooded central Europe,” said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at Imperial College London and one of the contributors to the report by World Weather Attribution (WWA).
Photo: Reuters
“Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming,” Kimutai said.
Global warming is leading to more intense rainfall, because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture than a cooler one, WWA said.
Similar storms will become 50 percent more frequent in central Europe and drop 5 percent more rain if warming reaches 2°C, the scientists said.
The researchers used weather data and climate models to show the effects of climate change on weather patterns, and compared the rainfall’s likelihood and intensity with that of the climate before the current warming trend. Earth’s climate is about 1.3°C warmer than the preindustrial period, and Europe is warming faster than other parts of the world.
“We need to prepare for even more heavy rainfall than what is predicted from these models,” Friederike Otto, coleader of WWA, said at a news conference on Tuesday ahead of the report’s release.
Despite the record levels of rainfall, the death toll in central Europe was lower than in previous, less widespread flooding events. This is because early forecasting allowed authorities to prepare by creating flood defense walls, emptying reservoirs and issuing warnings. In 2002, floods killed 232 people across a similar region. However, the impacts this time were still significant, with widespread damage to homes and infrastructure.
“These floods indicate just how costly climate change is becoming. Even with days of preparation, floodwaters still devastated towns, destroyed thousands of homes and saw the European Union pledge 10 billion euros in aid,” Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre technical adviser Maja Vahlberg said.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS