Picturesque cities throughout central Europe are inundated by soiled flood water after heavy weekend rains turned tranquil streams into raging rivers that wreaked havoc on infrastructure.
The floods have killed no less than 15 folks and destroyed buildings from Austria to Romania. The destruction comes after devastating floods all over the world final week when complete villages had been submerged in Myanmar and almost 300 prisoners escape a collapsed jail in Nigeria, the place floods have affected greater than 1 million folks.
Local weather scientists say they’re troubled by the injury however unsurprised by the depth. “The catastrophic rainfall hitting central Europe is exactly what scientists expect with climate change,” mentioned Joyce Kimutai, of Imperial Faculty London’s Grantham Institute.
She mentioned the loss of life and injury throughout Africa and Europe highlighted “how poorly prepared the world is for such floods”.
Scientists take care when attributing excessive rains to human affect as a result of so many components form the water cycle. Though it’s properly established that hotter air can maintain extra moisture, whether or not violent downpours happen additionally is dependent upon how a lot water is offered to fall.
Sonia Seneviratne, a local weather scientist at ETH Zürich, mentioned rapid analyses of the central European floods steered many of the water vapour got here from the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea, each of which have grown hotter on account of human-induced local weather breakdown, leading to extra water evaporating into the air.
“On average, the intensity of heavy precipitation events increases by 7% for each degree of global warming,” she mentioned. “We now have 1.2C of global warming, which means that on average heavy precipitation events are 8% more intense.”
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Climate station information signifies that bursts of September rainfall have turn out to be heavier in Germany, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia since 1950, Kimutai mentioned.
In Poland, the floods collapsed a bridge and washed homes away, based on native media. Within the Czech Republic, helicopters rescued stranded residents from rising waters. In Austria, one firefighter is reported to have died within the rescue efforts.
Within the Austrian capital, Vienna, which has been dwelling to Europe’s largest climate and local weather convention since 2005, the rain flooded a motorway and closed metro traces.
Erich Fischer, a local weather scientist at ETH Zürich, mentioned scientists on the convention used to debate the physics of how local weather change will increase rainfall depth over lunch on the banks of the New Danube. “It is ironic to now see these banks, where we were sitting in the sun and discussing the science of extreme precipitation, now being flooded.”
The loss of life toll from floods hinges on how properly communities put together for the rain and reply to its results. Scientists have urged governments to spend money on adapting to excessive climate occasions by early warning programs, extra resilient infrastructure and assist schemes for victims, whereas additionally ending their reliance on fossil fuels.
“It’s clear that even highly developed countries are not safe from climate change,” mentioned Friederike Otto, a local weather scientist on the Grantham Institute. “As long as the world burns oil, gas and coal, heavy rainfall and other weather extremes will intensify, making our planet a more dangerous and expensive place to live.”
