WASHINGTON (AP) — Human-caused climate change doubled the likelihood and intensified the heavy rains that led to devastating flooding in Central Europe earlier this month, a new flash study found. Torrential rain in mid-September from Storm Boris pummeled a large part of central Europe, including Romania, Poland, Czechia , Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany, and caused widespread damage. The floods killed 24 people, damaged bridges, submerged cars, left towns without power and in need of significant infrastructure repairs.
The severe four-day rainfall was “by far” the heaviest ever recorded in Central Europe and twice as likely because of warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, World Weather Attribution, a collection of scientists that run rapid climate attribution studies, said Wednesday from Europe. Climate change also made the rains between 7% and 20% more intense, the study found. “Yet again, these floods highlight the devastating results of fossil fuel-driven warming,” said Joyce Kimutai, the study’s lead author and a climate researcher at Imperial College, London.
To test the influence of human-caused climate change, the team of scientists analyzed weather data and used climate models to compare how such events have changed since cooler preindustrial times to today. Such models simulate a world without the current 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.
3 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming since preindustrial times, and see how likely a rainfall event t.
