German Floods Demonstrate Need to Prepare for Climate Change, Scientists Say

BERLIN—When German politicians flocked to the scenes of last week’s devastating floods that left more than 170 in the country dead, they all agreed on one thing regardless of their partisan persuasions: The record rainfalls and ensuing disaster were the product of climate change.

There is a broad scientific consensus that temperatures are rising and that this is increasing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, which can result in heftier downpours. There is also some evidence that the frequency of extreme weather events—heat waves, droughts, floods and storms—has been increasing.

However, scientists say it can be hard to identify the cause of specific extreme events. Nonetheless, they say that governments need to start preparing for the possibility of them. They say factors including a lack of preparedness and failure to heed warnings about imminent flooding made the rare event far deadlier than it might otherwise have been.

“[The death toll] is an impact of a failure to deal with climate change, not climate change itself,” said Liz Stephens, associate professor at the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at Reading University in Britain.

Immediately after the floods, Armin Laschet, the head of Angela Merkel’s conservatives and front-runner to replace her as chancellor, called for reinforcing policies to combat climate change. The leader of the opposition Greens, Annalena Baerbock, traveled to the affected region and linked the events with climate change, as did other political leaders from the center-right to the center-left.

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