Signs of climate change written all over France floods as scientists connect dots in new study
Scientists have been trying to find pattern between global warming and individual extreme weather events
Torrential rains which caused flooding in France recently bore the unmistakable fingerprint of climate change, according to research to be submitted to a scientific journal next week.
Global warming, especially in the last 50 years, had almost doubled the likelihood of the kind of three-day downpour that burst the banks of the Seine and Loire rivers, they calculated. At the very least, the probability of such an extreme rainfall event had increased by more than 40 per cent.
“We found that we could tie global warming directly to the recent rainstorms in France that triggered so much flooding and destruction,” said Robert Vautard, a senior scientist with France’s Laboratory for Climate and Environment Sciences.
The Seine hit its highest water mark in three decades, while overflowing tributaries forced evacuations and left tens of thousands of people without power in nearby towns. In southern Germany, heavy rains also caused flash flooding that swept away houses and cars. At least 18 people were killed in four European countries.
Unlike for France, the evidence was not strong enough to establish a direct link between warming and the destructive rainfall in Germany, the researchers said. This does not mean that climate change did not play a key role, only that observations failed to line up with the models well enough to draw similarly robust conclusions.