Scientists from World Weather Attribution (WWA) calculated that the widespread flooding of Central Europe was made at least 50% more likely to occur and 7% more intense due to anthroprocentric climate change, according to a report published this weekend .
In September this year, unprecedented flooding wrecked havoc across Poland, Czechia, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Germany and Slovakia. Named Storm Boris, the floods directly affected over 2 million people and caused at least 24 deaths, with many still injured. It also resulted in billions of dollars of damage, particularly affecting Austria and the Czech-Polish border area. There were severe power-cuts in all affected countries, impacting critical infrastructure including schools and hospitals.
WWA experts from Czechia, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, France and the UK assessed the impact of human-caused climate change on the likelihood and intensity of the heavy rainfall leading to severe flooding. They modelled a scenario where humanity hadn’t been burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale since the 19th century, finding that even under ‘conservative’ estimates, such an event was half as likely to occur without humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions.
In the modern climate is around 1.3 degrees Centigrade warmer globally than pre-industrial times as a result of human activity. However, Europe is the world’s fastest warming continent, with the climate being 2.3 degrees warmer in the last 5 years on average than in the period 1850-1900. Whilst such extreme flooding is still rare – only expected to occur every 100-300 years- if global warming reaches 2 degrees Centigrade, such events will become 5% more intense and 50% more frequent.
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In response to the crisis, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared an emergency ‘State of Natural Disaster’ across the country, calling for EU funding and resources to be provided to mitigate damages. The European Commission has announced 10 billion euros of aid for affected member states, whilst war-stricken Ukraine offered to send 100 rescue workers equipped with specialised flood response equipment, Polish state news agency PAP has reported. Other European countries have also offered aid, with PolskieRadio reporting that hundreds of dehumidifiers were donated to Czechia to dry out essential infrastructure and homes. Meanwhile, Sweden is preparing to supply hundreds of bottles of chloramine, a bacteria-killing chemical, to support water treatment efforts in Poland. Thankfully, the death toll was comparatively far lower than previous extreme flooding in the region in 2002 and 1997, thanks to advanced weather forcasting and strengthened flood defences.
Friederike Otto, co-author of the WWA study and senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, told the BBC, “This is definitely what we will see much more of in the future….. [It] is the absolute fingerprint signature of climate change.”
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Donate to the GlobalGiving Storm Boris Relief Fund.
Donate to the Caritas Emergency Response Fund, to support their work in areas including Central Europe affected by flooding.
Learn about the GoodsForGood project and donate here.
Write to your MEP to pressure the European Commission to take more radical action on the climate crisis, and to continue to support affected regions here.
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