The floods causing havoc across much of central Europe are a portent of things to come as the continent’s climate gets stormier.
In the German town of Passau, the waters rose to their highest level since 1501 on 3 June. The floods in Czech capital Prague have since begun to recede but Dresden, Germany, is bracing itself for the river Elbe to rise 5 metres higher than normal.
The risk of floods had been growing for weeks, as a rainy spring left the ground sodden. In Austria, it was the seventh wettest spring since records began in 1858, according to Austria’s Central Institution for Meteorology and Geodynamics. So when two months of rain fell in two days, the water had nowhere to go.
While it is premature to pin the heavy rainfall on climate change, it could be partly to blame, says Stéphane Isoard of the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, Denmark. But he says bad land management is just as important. “We build over the land and there is urban sprawl, so there is less opportunity for water to infiltrate the soil.” With more floods inevitable because of the wetter weather predicted by climate change, Isoard says Europe needs to adapt to a new world of frequent inundation.
Some work is already underway. Wetlands are being restored around stretches of the Danube in Hungary and Romania away from the current devastation. Green spaces like this can absorb extra water, making floods less severe. Isoard says it is better to use to use such “soft” defences to smooth out the effects of the rising waters since “hard” defences like dykes just lead to violent floods when they break.
“Over the last 20 years, events like this have become more common,” says Iain White of the University of Manchester in the UK. Central Europe has improved its flood responses since severe floods struck in 2002, he adds, “but there comes a point where you can’t defend” when there’s simply too much water.
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