Europe floods show need to curb emissions and adapt, say experts
BRUSSELS: Just as the European Union was announcing plans to spend billions of euros to contain climate change, massive clouds gathered over Germany and nearby nations to unleash an unprecedented storm that left death and destruction in its wake.
Despite ample warnings, politicians and weather forecasters were shocked at the ferocity of the precipitation that caused flash flooding that claimed more than 150 lives this week in western Europe.
READ: Germany picks through rubble after deadly European floods
Scientists can’t yet say for sure whether climate change caused the flooding, but they insist that it certainly exacerbates the extreme weather that has been on show from the western US and Canada to Siberia to Europe’s Rhine region.
“There is a clear link between extreme precipitation occurring and climate change,” Wim Thiery, a climate scientist and professor at Brussels University, said on Friday (Jul 17).
Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Potsdam, referring to the recent heat records set in the US and Canada, said “some are so extreme that they would be virtually impossible without global warming”.
READ: Deadly heat wave slams Canada, US
For Diederik Samsom, the European Commission's Cabinet chief behind this week's massive proposals to spend billions and force industry into drastic reforms to help cut the bloc's emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55 per cent this decade, this week's disaster was a cautionary tale.
“People are washed away in Germany ... and Belgium and the Netherlands, too. We are experiencing climate change," he said on a conference call of the European Policy Centre think tank. "A few years ago, you had to point to a point in the future or far away on the planet to talk about climate change. It's happening now - here.”
TEMPERATURE AND RAINFALL
And climate scientists point toward two specific things that have contributed to this week's calamity.
First, with every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature, the air can take in 7 per cent more humidity. It can hold the water longer, leading to drought, but it also leads to an increase in dense, massive rainfall once it releases it.
Yet as Europe warms - with Scandinavia currently experiencing an unusual heat wave - the jet stream is weakened, causing its meandering course to stop, sometimes for days, Thiery said.
He said such a phenomenon was visible in Canada too, where it helped cause a “heat dome” in which temperatures rose to 50 degrees Celsius.
“And it is causing the heavy rain that we have seen in Western Europe," he said.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions are drastically curbed in the coming decades, the amount of carbon dioxide and other planet-heating gases already in the atmosphere means extreme weather is going to become more likely.
Experts say such phenomena will hit those areas that aren't prepared for it particularly hard.
“We need to make our built environment - buildings, outdoor spaces, cities - more resilient to climate change,” said Lamia Messari-Becker, a professor of engineering at the University of Siegen.
Those that don't adapt will risk greater loss of life and damage to property, said Ernst Rauch, chief climate and geoscientist at the reinsurance giant Munich Re.
“The events of today and yesterday or so give us a hint that we need to do better with respect to being ready for these type of events,” he said. “The events themselves are not really unexpected, but the sort of the order of magnitude probably has surprised some.”