Aradhana AravindanJames Mackenzie
July 22, 202112:41 PM EDT
July 22 (Reuters) - Deadly floods that have upended life in both China and Germany have sent a stark reminder that climate change is making weather more extreme across the globe.
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In Europe, climate change is likely to increase the number of large, slow-moving storms that can linger longer in one area and deliver deluges of the kind seen in Germany and Belgium, according to a study published June 30 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
As the atmosphere warms with climate change, it also holds more moisture, which means that when rainclouds break, more rain is released. By the end of the century, such storms could be 14 times more frequent, the researchers found in the study using computer simulations.
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In both China and northwestern Europe, the disasters followed a period of unusually heavy rain, equivalent in the Chinese case to a year's rainfall being dumped in just three days, that completely overwhelmed flood defences.
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But measures such as improving the resilience of buildings and raising riverbanks and improving drainage are unlikely to be enough on their own to avert the effects of severe flooding. As a last resort, warning systems, which were heavily criticized in Germany for leaving people insufficient time to react, will have to be improved.
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