Almost a third of the European river network was flooded last year, which was one of the most rainy years on the continent since 1950, said European Copernicus observatory in a report published Tuesday in collaboration with the world Meteorological Organization.
It is “the most extensive floods” that Europe has known since 2013 “, said Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Middle Term weather forecasts (ECMWF), which provides Copernicus climatological service. These floods affected around 413,000 people, making at least 335 of them, with an estimated cost of damage of around 18 billion euros.
These disasters occurred during the hottest year in the world and illustrate the fact that a warmer planet, absorbing more water in the atmosphere, allows more violent precipitation and floods, a threat that weighs particularly on Europe.
Three months of rain in five days
In September, the Boris storm dropped up to three months of rain in just five days, causing immense floods and major damage in eight countries in central and eastern Europe.
A month later, powerful storms, fed by the hot and humid air of the Mediterranean, poured torrential rains on Spain, causing floods that devastated the eastern province of Valencia, killing 232 people.
At the beginning of 2024, each month was the scene of a major flood on the continent, recalls the report: January in the United Kingdom, February in the north of Spain, March and May in the north of France, June in Germany and Switzerland. The flow of rivers was also particularly high, some like the Thames in the United Kingdom or the Loire in France recording their highest level for 33 years in spring and autumn.
In question: particularly intense precipitation on the western part of Europe, while conversely, the oriental regions were, on average, more dry and warmer.
“Hot spots”
According to Ms. Burgess, this “striking contrast” is not directly linked to climate change, but rather to opposite pressure systems that influence cloudy coverage and moisture transport. But the storms of 2024 were “probably more violent due to a warmer and more humid atmosphere,” she said. “With global warming, we are witnessing more and more extreme extreme events”.
This confirms the projections of IPCC UN climatic experts, according to which Europe will be one of the regions where the risk of flooding should increase the most due to the global warming.
Since the 1980s, Europe has heated twice as fast as the world average. It is the “continent that warms the most”, which has become one of the “hot spots” of climate change, underlines Florence Rabier, director of the ECMWF.
“Urgent to act”
In 2024, the heat on the surface of the continent was never so high. This helped to increase the temperature of the bordering seas and oceans, which also reached records last year, and to melt European glaciers at an unprecedented rate.
“It is urgent to act, because the severity of the risk should reach critical or catastrophic levels by the middle or the end of this century,” said Andrew Ferrone, an EU scientific coordinator within the UN Climate, stressing that each tenth of degree avoided is important.
Only half of European cities have adaptation plans to deal with extreme climatic events, such as extreme floods and heat. “This represents an encouraging progress compared to the 26% of 2018,” notes the report. “But some southeast and southern Caucasus European countries are lagging behind. So we have to go faster, further and together” said Celeste Saulo, the general secretary of the OMM.
