Is climate change to blame for Central Europe’s catastrophic flooding?

The flooding has followed heavy rain and snow brought by Storm Boris over the weekend.

Central Europe has seen its worst flooding in at least two decades with heavy rainfall from Storm Boris leaving a trail of destruction from Romania to Poland.
The death toll has now risen to 23, with seven each in Poland and Romania, five in Austria and four in the Czech Republic. Many more people are still missing and tens of thousands have also been evacuated from the worst hit regions.
In Poland, Prime Minister Donal Tusk declared a state of natural disaster in the worst affected southern regions of the country.
The country’s defence ministry said 14,000 soldiers have been deployed to badly flooded regions. People in the city of Wroclaw have been fortifying river banks with waters expected to peak on Thursday.
Slovakia’s capital Bratislava was hit by the worst flooding it has seen in 30 years with many forced to evacuate and some parts of the city completely cut off by floodwaters.
The weather has improved in some places with water now receding, allowing authorities to start clean up work.
Other countries, however, including Hungary and Croatia are still on high alert as forecast heavy rain threatens to further raise water levels in the Danube River.
In Italy, Storm Boris brought torrential downpours on Thursday causing severe flooding in the northern Emilia-Romagna region.
Around 1,000 people have been evacuated, acting regional president Irene Priolo told public radio and in nearby Ravenna, authorities ordered the evacuation of all ground floor residences. The national firefighting service said it has carried out more than 500 rescues in the region.
Mayor of Ravenna, Michele De Pascale, told Radio 24 that “the event is very similar to what we had last May”. Deadly flooding in May 2023 killed 17 people and caused more than €8 billion of damage according to local authorities.
Poland’s deputy climate minister, Urszula Sara Zielińska, has blamed climate change for the disaster.
She told the UK’s BBC that after extreme flooding in 1997, it was said that disasters on this scale would only happen “once every thousand years”. Now they are happening just 26 years later.
“There is a clear cause to that and it’s called climate change,” she said.
The flooding followed heavy rain and snow brought by Storm Boris over the weekend. It is too soon for a definitive scientific analysis showing what role climate change played in this extreme weather event.
Climate scientists have, however, warned that extreme rainfall events like this are set to increase in Europe as the planet warms. For every 1C of warming, experts say the atmosphere is able to hold 7 per cent more water vapour.
A marine heatwave in the Mediterranean Sea is also likely to have played a role after record sea temperatures were reached last month.
High sea surface temperatures lead to increased evaporation and so more moisture in the air. This warm, wet air met very cold air from the Arctic creating the perfect conditions for Storm Boris to deliver heavy rainfall.
According to experts from the World Weather Attribution group, the heatwave across the Mediterranean this July would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused global warming.
The EU has warned that devastating flooding in Central Europe and deadly fires in Portugal are proof of “climate breakdown” that will become the norm without urgent action.
Crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarcic told lawmakers in Strasbourg on Wednesday that Europe cannot “return to a safer past”.
“Make no mistake. This tragedy is not an anomaly. This is fast becoming the norm for our shared future,” he said.
Lenaric also warned that countries are struggling to cope with the rising cost of disasters like this with damages in Europe in 2021 and 2022 surpassing an average of €50 billion a year.
“The cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of action,” he said.
Nicolò Wojewoda, European regional director at international environmental organisation 350.org, says this is yet another “devastating wake-up call” for world leaders.
“We are witnessing ordinary people paying with their lives, right now, as decision-makers delay and obstruct climate action. How many more deadly disasters do they need to see in order to take necessary concrete steps to set policy and implement measures that end the suffering we are witnessing today?”
Wojewoda adds that, as world leaders gather at a series of summits, conferences and negotiations over the coming weeks, these preventable disasters rather than their words will be used as a measure to judge their actions.