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Heavy rain in Europe causes billions in damage

A recent bout of torrential rain over Europe caused heavy flooding first in the Bavarian Region of Germany, then central and northeastern France, Romania, and Belgium. At least 18 deaths have been attributed to the floods, and damage assessments for France alone have already been estimated to exceed $1 billion Euros (just over $1.12 billion).

In Paris, the Seine overflowed its banks, cresting at heights not seen for nearly 35 years, forcing the closure of the Louvre museum. In Bavaria, people watched as cars and homes were crushed by strongly surging floodwaters. Thousands of evacuations occurred across Europe due to the floods.

The flooding resulted from a three-day rain event that occurred when low pressure disturbances that were slow moving picked up humid air and moisture from the south, convecting to create heavy thunderstorms in Germany and extreme precipitation in France, where the systems converged and nearly stalled.

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Other severe weather that broke records also occurred during this time period, including lightning strikes, at least two tornadoes, a flash flood in Bavaria on June 2, and flooding in Germany, Austria and Belgium over the first days of June. These events were not part of the analysis, however.

Analyzing a connect to climate change

Researchers sought to determine if climate change played a part in these extreme weather events. The analysis, conducted by World Weather Attribution — a conglomerate of climate change institutions and universities, including Oxford University, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the University of Melbourne, and Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre — believes that global warming did indeed likely play a role in this weather event.

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Researches noted that historically the climate is slightly drier in Germany during this time of the year, with July typically seeing the extreme precipitation peaks. In France, the Loire river has only flooded twice during this time of year, with all other flooding occurring during the winter months of December through March.

To determine if this extreme weather event was related to climate change, researchers applied a variety of regional climate models and thousands of simulations, along with analyzing statistical and historical data and trends in global climate models (1960-2016) to reach their conclusions.

Map of mean rainfall (in mm) for the 3-day period from May 29 – 31, 2016 over France. b) Map shows 1-day maximum precipitation total (in mm) from Jan. to June 5th, 2016 over Germany. Source: NOAA/NCEP/CPC
Map of mean rainfall (in mm) for the 3-day period from May 29 – 31, 2016 over France. b) Map shows 1-day maximum precipitation total (in mm) from Jan. to June 5th, 2016 over Germany. Source: NOAA/NCEP/CPC

Results clearly showed a significant 40 percent increase in the chance of a three-day rain event in France due to climate change impacts. Researchers noted that “by comparing recent 3-day precipitation extremes in April-June with the historical record and climate model simulations, the team found that an event like this now expected to occur roughly 80 percent more often due to climate change than it was in the past for the Seine River Basin.”

The Loire River Basin fared slightly worse, with an event such as this likely occurring approximately 90 percent more often. Results for Germany were inconclusive.

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