Fierce storms in Europe are common, but their pattern is changing due to sustained global warming. He flood that hit Spain provides a clear indication that even rich countries accustomed to such extreme events are not sufficiently prepared for what is to come.

Pointing out that this is the deadliest climate disaster to hit Spain since 1973 does not convey the enormity of what happened, concentrated in Valencia. It was not just about large volumes of water, but also about its speed and destructive capacity.

A year’s worth of rainfall in a few hours exposed flaws in the national weather warning system, a lack of preparedness for extreme weather and deficiencies in emergency services. Most worrying, perhaps, was people’s inability to move to safety quickly enough.

Without a doubt, climate change is the key factor contributing to these extreme rainfall events, as countries have to juggle the extremes of droughts and flood; two sides of the same climate change coin. In Ireland it is a combination of extreme rainfall and flooding that coincides with saturated land.

The Mediterranean has experienced the warmest water surface temperature ever recorded, with an average temperature of 28.5 degrees in mid-August. Heat means more energy, more water vapor, and more instability when the atmosphere begins to cool in the fall.

As with regions across the planet, there are relevant local conditions, according to Met Éireann head of climate science Keith Lambkin. The very warm and humid air in eastern Spain is often pushed upward by the colder air below, creating very intense rain clouds. When combined with the lack of strong winds, it produces a “conveyor belt” of torrential rain. These large storms, isolated from the jet stream, stall in one place.

People are familiar with the color-coded weather warning system, but climate change and its worsening impacts are causing a shift from “what the weather will be like to impact-based warnings about what the weather will do,” Lambkin added.

This is happening globally and within the EU, with Met Éireann leading the charge in Ireland, but it is not easy to implement: accurately forecasting where a storm will land is a real challenge. “No model will say which bridge will collapse or at what time,” Lambkin said.

The United Nations World Meteorological Organization is leading the development of the Early Warnings for All initiative in response to poor warning systems in many countries, especially in Africa and South America.

People should not die from these types of forecast weather events in countries where they have the resources to do better, said Liz Stephens, professor of climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading.

“We have a long way to go to prepare for these types of events, and worse, in the future. Limiting the damage and loss of life caused by extreme weather is only possible by adapting our infrastructure and our early warnings to a more dangerous world and, crucially, by rapidly and massively reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, which is at the heart of it. of the problem.”

Human-caused climate change intensified the 10 deadliest extreme weather events of the past 20 years and contributed to more than 570,000 deaths, a World Weather Attribution group study from Imperial College London, published on Thursday. It highlights how climate change is already incredibly dangerous with 1.3 degrees warming.

When it comes to precipitation, each additional degree of warming gives the atmosphere another 7 percent of water-carrying capacity. With Europe warming twice as fast as any other continent, that means the devastation in Valencia will sadly soon be repeated elsewhere.