Story at a glance:
- More than 50 people have been killed in catastrophic flooding that triggered a state of emergency in parts of Germany.
- Scientists say the floods can be attributed to the consequences of climate change.
- The flooding follows a global trend of storms that bring record-breaking downpours.
Germany has been hit with flooding that killed more than 50 people — the result of climate change, scientists say.
Water levels surged in the Rhine River area, which sits between Switzerland, northern Germany and the Netherlands, after roughly 39 gallons of rain came down over a period of 48 hours.
At least 58 people have been killed in addition to the tens of thousands of homes that were flooded, and the power supply has been interupted, The Guardian reported.
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The flooding broke previous records in Germany for the amount of rainfall that filled certain cities like Hagen and Stammheim.
In the city of Hagen, the flood triggered a state of emergency as water burst into banks and rose to levels unseen since four centuries ago. The Köln-Stammheim station in Stammheim reported about 6 inches of water for more than 24 hours, topping the previous record high of just under 4 inches.
Climate scientists are saying human-made emissions are causing more floods, heat waves, droughts, storms and other forms of extreme weather.
“I am surprised by how far it is above the previous record,” Dieter Gerten, professor of global change climatology and hydrology at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the Guardian. “We seem to be not just above normal but in domains we didn’t expect in terms of spatial extent and the speed it developed.”
It is up to scientists to determine how much of the global trend of storms bringing record-breaking downpours was caused by human activity.
“With climate change we do expect all hydro-meteorological extremes to become more extreme. What we have seen in Germany is broadly consistent with this trend,” said Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
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