A study confirms the link between global warming and heavy rainfall as of last July, which led to catastrophic floods in Limburg, Belgium and Germany.

According to A Research As we saw in Western Europe in July, climate change is exacerbating heavy rainfall and flood disasters. This is the result of a team of international scientists in an ongoing study.

In the current climate, some parts of Western Europe can be expected to be affected by such rains and floods every 400 years. This will happen more often in the future as the weather changes. The study, which analyzed weather records and computer simulations, was produced as part of the World Weather Attribution Initiative (WWAI), which investigates extreme climate change.

As temperatures rise, scientists say, heavy rains are becoming more frequent. When the weather warms up to 0.8 degrees, the frequency increases every 300 years and the intensity of heavy rainfall increases. For their analysis, the scientists looked at France, western Germany, the eastern part of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and northern Switzerland to see how often it rains heavily here and how it affects rising temperatures around the world. The risk of such disasters in July has increased from 1.2 to 9 per cent in the region, with the maximum rainfall being 3 to 19 per cent higher than before.

“Even industrialized nations are not protected”
It makes clear ““Even industrialized nations cannot protect themselves from the serious consequences of these extreme weather events and will only get worse with more climate change.”, German climate researcher Frederick Otto warns, teaches at Oxford University and is currently head of WWAI. “This is a global danger that we all need to stop urgently. “

An example from scientists: If the probability increases 5 times, this means that an average event occurs every 400 years and every 2000 years. Frank Cranecomb of the German Meteorological Service (DWD) explained that this factor could not be more precise because, among other things, the forecasts varied using different weather patterns. The figures show a very clear trend towards more intense weather as a result of climate change.

The effects will be much greater than in the past with heavy rainfall, Cranecamp said. “Local and national Western European authorities need to be aware of these increasing dangers from heavy rainfall in order to better prepare for the extreme weather conditions to come.”Said the head of the Potsdam Regional Climate Office of the DWD.

Enno Nilson of the German Institute of Hydrology said the findings could help analyze improvements in flood protection.

As global climate temperatures dropped by 1.2 degrees, 39 scientists compared the effects of the current climate to the end of the 19th century.

Flood (Pixby)