Climate change materializes the worst way for Europeans. In 2024, Europe has indeed experienced record heat but also its worst floods for more than a decade.
Nearly 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 this Tuesday in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization.
Hundreds of deaths
It is “the most extensive floods” that Europe has known “since 2013”, underlined Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Middle Term Meteorological Forecast (ECMWF), which provides Copernicus climatological service. These floods affected around 413,000 people, costing their lives to 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.
In September, the Boris storm thus 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 province of Valencia, killing 232 people.
Above all, early 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.
Part of Europe underwater, the other too dry
And the flow of rivers was 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, then the eastern regions were on average drier and warmer. According to Samantha Burgess, this “striking contrast” is not directly linked to climate change, but rather to opposite pressure systems that influence cloud cover and moisture transport.
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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 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.
