Climate change made Europe floods more likely, intense: study

Climate change made the deadly floods that devastated parts of Germany and Belgium last month up to nine times more likely, according to an international study published Tuesday.

At least 190 people lost their lives in severe floods that pummelled western Germany in mid-July, and at least 38 people perished after extreme rainfall in Belgium's southern Wallonia region.

Using the growing speciality of attribution science, climate experts are increasingly able to link manmade climate change to specific extreme weather events.

To calculate the role of climate change on the rainfall that led to the floods, scientists analysed weather records and computer simulations to compare the climate today-which is around 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer due to manmade emissions-with the climate of the past.

They focused on oneand two-day rainfall levels, and found that two particularly hard hit areas saw unprecedented precipitation last month.

In the Ahr and Erft regions of Germany, 93 millimetres (3.6 inches) of rain fell in a single day at the height of the crisis.

The Belgium region of Meuse saw a record-breaking 106 mm of rain over a two-day period.

They calculated that the floods were between 1.2 and nine times more likely to happen in today's warmed climate, compared to a scenario where no heating had occurred since the preindustrial era.

Such downpours over Germany and the Benelux region are now between 319 percent heavier because of human-induced warming, according to the study, organised by World Weather Attribution.