Climate change 'means extreme rainfall more likely'

Climate change means lethal floods, such as those caused by extreme rainfall in parts of Germany and Belgium last month, are now up to nine times more likely, leading scientists have warned.

Extreme weather will become more frequent and intense as climate change warms the planet, according to new research by the World Weather Attribution initiative, an international group of experts.

The meteorologists found that such downpours are now 3 percent to 19 percent heavier in the region, compared to when the climate was 1.2 C cooler, 150 years ago.

The study findings back up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark report this month, which said there is "unequivocal" evidence that human activities were warming the planet, and that this is making extreme weather events increasingly more likely and more severe.

This year, devastating floods have struck Western Europe and China, while extreme heat waves have caused havoc in Russia, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Canada, and the United States.

More than 200 people were killed, homes destroyed, and businesses and infrastructure wrecked as record-breaking rainfall caused devastation in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg between July 12 and 15.

"We will definitely get more of this in a warming climate," said the group's co-leader Friederike Otto, an associate director at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, quoted by Reuters news agency.

The World Weather Attribution, or WWA, initiative uses meteorological measurements and computer simulations to find out whether climate change made extreme weather more likely, which is a method known as attribution science.

"These floods have shown us that even developed countries are not safe from the severe impacts of extreme weather that we have seen and that are known to get worse with climate change," said Otto, quoted in the Financial Times.

"This is an urgent global challenge and we need to step up to it. The science is clear and has been for years."

Quoted by Sky News, Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute climate researcher Sjoukje Philip said: "We combined the knowledge of specialists from several fields of study to understand the influence of climate change on the terrible flooding last month, and to make clear what we can and can not analyze in this event.

"It is difficult to analyse the climate change influence on heavy rainfall at very local levels, but we were able to show that, in Western Europe, greenhouse gas emissions have made events like these more likely."

Last month, the WWA group of scientists drew attention with the pronouncement that the recent record-breaking heat wave in North America would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change.

WWA scientist Maarten van Aalst, of the University of Twente in the Netherlands and director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that as temperatures rise further, the world will be exposed to increasing extreme rainfall and flooding.

Quoted in The Guardian, Van Aalst said: "The huge human and economic costs of these floods are a stark reminder that countries around the world need to prepare for more extreme weather events, and that we urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid such risks from getting even further out of hand."