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

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 rose to at least 21 people across Poland, Hungary, Romania and Austria on Tuesday with many more missing. Tens of thousands of people have also been evacuated across Central Europe including 15,000 on Czechia’s border with Poland.

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 flood-hit regions. People in the city of Wroclaw have been fortifying river banks with waters expected to peak on Thursday.

Hungary, Croatia, and Slovakia are also on high alert as forecast heavy rain threatens to further raise water levels in the Danube River.

Now, with more heavy rain expected across Italy in the coming days, the Emilia-Romagna and Lazio regions are under a yellow weather alert. Firefighters in the city of Pescara, Abruzzo say they have already received hundreds of calls for help due to flooding.

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

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.

Extreme weather is ‘fast becoming the norm’ for Europe

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.

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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.

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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.