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The study is the latest in the growing field of rapid correlation science that examines extreme weather events such as torrential rains and heatwaves to see if and to what extent they are affected by climate change. carried out by. World Weather Relation, a collaboration between climate scientists and others.
Work is carried out quickly while the event is still in the minds of the public. Speed usually means that studies won’t be peer reviewed until later, but they do use peer-reviewed analysis techniques that combine models and observational data.
The flood study comes with some caveats, the researchers said. Rainfall alone does not tell the whole story of a flood; river flow rates and water levels are better indicators of the ultimate impact of a storm. But the flood destroyed many of the instruments that would provide this data, “so we focused our assessment on heavy rainfall as the main driver,” says climate scientist Sarah Kew of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.
Rainstorms occurred in two relatively small areas, too small to be represented in many climate models. Therefore, the researchers used a “pooled zones” approach, including other areas north of the Alps to the Netherlands.
Despite these limitations, “We are still pretty confident that the results we provided are quite useful,” said Frank Kreienkamp, a climate scientist at the German Meteorological Service.
The lower end of the range of outcomes – warming makes such a rain event 1.2 times more likely – indicates that climate change has less of an impact and that the event is more a result of natural climate variability. However, Dr. Even that figure represents a 20 percent probability of an increase attributable to climate change, Kew said.
The research was made public two weeks after the release of a major United Nations report on climate change, which found, among other things, that extreme weather events will continue to increase in frequency and magnitude as warming continues.
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