Floods in Europe: “Climate change is here”

With extreme weather conditions that killed more than 150 people in Europe and scorching heat in parts of North America, the debate around climate change has intensified in recent weeks. But, Can global warming be blamed for these very different and isolated events in different parts of the world?

“Climate change is no longer something abstract, it has happened, we are living it up close and painfully,” said the governor of the German Land of Rhineland-Palatinate, Social Democrat (SPD) Malu Dreyer, who leads one of the most affected. areas.

Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) spoke in the same terms, adding that “Germany cannot afford not to invest in climate protection”, and also Home Secretary Horts Seehofer in statements The mirror : “No one can doubt that this disaster is linked to the climate crisis.” The minister promised aid to the victims.

The flooding in Europe comes after Canada and the United States finished going through a heat wave of up to 49.6 degrees Celsius, a phenomenon exacerbated by the climate crisis. “There is a clear link between extreme precipitation and climate change,” Professor Wim Thiery, of the University of Brussels, told the Ap agency, while for Stefan Rahmstorf, of the University of Potsdam, some of this precipitation is just as extreme as it would be. impossible without global warmingl, as seen recently in western North America. Carlo Buontempo, director of the European meteorological service Copernicus, stressed yesterday that with climate change, phenomena such as torrential rains are expected to become even more virulent. “What we have seen in Germany is very consistent with this trend.”

According to Jean Jouzel, climatologist and former vice-president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is a “plausible” relationship, although this has not yet been proven.

“Unfortunately, we are in the early stages of global warming, and what lies ahead will be even worse,” he told AFP. “We should not fool ourselves into thinking that climate change is limited to a few isolated disasters or to a region or period of time.”

In Europe, water-laden air masses were blocked at high altitudes by low temperatures, causing them to stagnate for four days over the region and pouring torrents of rain, Jouzel said. “The phenomenon is known to meteorologists, but it had not happened on this scale for 100 years,” he said.

“In just two days, the region saw the same amount of rain that it would normally experience in two or three months – the kind of event one can sometimes see in Mediterranean climates in the fall, but not under these latitudes. “

Scientists will now have to analyze the event to determine precisely why it happened, he said. “Science takes time, but I think we’ll have an answer soon,” he said.

As to whether global warming was directly responsible for the disaster, the expert said: “We have our suspicions, but these are not scientific facts. You have to take the time to analyze the event ”.

On the other hand, the IPCC has long predicted an intensification of this type of extreme phenomena, in particular rains, he specifies. “Scientists have already observed a sharp increase in extreme precipitation over the past 20 years, especially in the Mediterranean,” he says.

“It is clear that if more water evaporates because it is warmer, it will technically cause more precipitation and more episodes of heavy rain.” There is a real risk that these types of events will escalate in the years and decades to come, Jouzel believes.

If the Earth’s temperature rises by three or four degrees, phenomena such as droughts, heat waves and floods will be more frequent and intense, he says.

Having the right infrastructure to deal with these phenomena will be the only way to avoid human tragedies, such as the devastating effects of recent temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius in Canada. “I don’t think there is enough awareness, and I’m not sure people understand the seriousness of the problem. Policymakers, in particular, are not up to the task, ”Jouzel said.

With information from AFP and AP

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