FLOODS OF THE CENTURY KEEP COMING IN GERMANY

Floods in Germany - a sign of climate change?

June 6, 2013 (Deutsche Welle)

“Many regions of Germany, and other parts of Central Europe, have been hit severely by flooding in the wake of unusually heavy rain…This is a weather pattern that develops over the Mediterranean, sucks in masses of water and travels around the Alps before moving in from the East over Poland and the Czech Republic to Germany…

“…The experts stress that weather events are always individual events, which cannot be directly attributed to a changing climate…However, analysis of German weather trends - data which is available going back to 1871 - indicates an increase in severe rainfall events…[A]n increase in severe rainfall is not as easy to demonstrate as the obvious rise in temperature...[but] an increase in heavy rain [can be expcted] as the planet warms…”

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“…[T]he rise in emissions of greenhouse gases [seems] linked to a rise in extreme events…[and there] is a clear physical explanation for the connection between precipitation and warmer temperatures…

“The term ‘flood of the century,’ used in Germany to describe the last bout of dramatic flooding in the country in 2002, is no longer appropriate…What used to happen once in a century could well become an event that recurs every decade or so…The experts argue that adaptation to climate change is unavoidable, given the continuing rise in CO2 emissions…”

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