Author: Anthony Watts and H. Sterling Burnett
A BBC article titled “Scientists are sure a warming world is making Spain's storms more intense” links recent flash floods in Spain to climate change. This is wrong. The data refutes claims that flooding in Europe is getting worse as a result of mildly warming temperatures. Furthermore, this story ignores Spain's long history of sometimes catastrophic flooding, since many of Spain's cities are located in narrow valleys.
Dr Friederike Otto, co-director of World Weather Attribution (WWA), told the BBC: “There is no doubt that these heavy rains are exacerbated by climate change. “Every time fossil fuels warm A little bit, and the atmosphere will hold more moisture, leading to greater rainfall.”
The problem is, neither Otto nor the BBC cite any data to support the claim that the storm's moisture content increased due to warming, because there isn't any. Instead, this attribution is based on predictions from a flawed computer model, which is typical of the type of “study” WWA is quick to publish. As with all WWA studies climate realism As discussed earlier, they suffer from the logical fallacy of assuming what they are trying to prove. WWA's research hypothesizes that climate change will cause or contribute to specific weather events, and then uses computer models to predict how large the effects will be. This is not how one conducts science. climate realism Similar attribution claims have been refuted on several occasions, such as here , here , and here .
The recent horrific flooding in Spain's Valencia province has claimed the lives of more than 150 people, but there is no evidence that the flooding is historically unusual. Looking back at the historical background of the floodplain, the area has experienced many severe floods. The BBC article claimed to explain the event with “increased atmospheric humidity” and rising temperatures, but other meteorologists mentioned by the BBC said the event was caused by the common “gota fria” weather pattern (also known as “cold droplets”). “) driven. ”, recently named DANA in meteorological texts. This weather event typically brings cold air from northern latitudes over the warm Mediterranean Sea, causing sudden and intense rainfall.
The latest storms to hit Spain are consistent with the country's long history of severe autumn storms. Gotafria disease has not become more common or severe during the recent mild warming.
Valencia, located along and at the mouth of the Mediterranean River Turia, suffered similar floods, for example, in 1897, 1957 and 1996, 127, 67 and 28 years before warming, respectively, when temperatures were cooler. than now. Dozens of people died in each flood. The historical record of the 1957 Valencia floods documented by Caroline Angus illustrates the well-known pattern of extreme rainfall events in the region, long before the so-called climate change era. On October 14, 1957, an unprecedented flood struck Valencia, flooding the city with nearly 6,000 cubic meters of water per second. The surrounding towns of Valencia, including Pedralba and Vila Marquesante, experienced record rainfall, causing massive flooding that affected thousands of lives and required years of recovery work.
The flood event of 1957 was not an anomaly but part of a natural cycle that the Spaniards came to realize was a seasonal threat posed by the temperature dynamics and topography of the Mediterranean Sea. That storm dumped about a foot of rain over 2 days at a time when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels – said to contribute to climate change – were only 314 parts per million (ppm), compared with today's measured 422 ppm.
As Caroline Angus's account of the Valencian floods of 1957 reveals, these conditions were neither new nor unprecedented. The BBC cited “climate change” and atmospheric warming as the main causes of recent floods, ignoring the atmospheric mechanisms behind these storms and downplaying recurring patterns that resemble natural events. It also all too easily ignores the well-known phenomenon of gota fria, despite the BBC themselves writing: “[w]Ethereum researchers say the main cause of heavy rainfall may be natural weather events [gota fria] Fall and winter hit Spain. Any connection to climate change is based solely on quick, non-peer-reviewed attribution claims, not data.
From a scientific perspective, it is a glaring omission that the BBC did not cite the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found little evidence of increased precipitation. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) provides an assessment of confidence levels in precipitation trends.
According to Chapter 12, Table 12.12 (see below), the IPCC expresses “low confidence” in the apparent trend of increasing heavy precipitation in southern Europe, including the Mediterranean basin, even under flawed high-emission climate model scenarios such as RCP8.5.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said that the fact that natural weather systems dominate rainfall patterns in Spain and elsewhere cannot be completely ignored, because for every degree of temperature rise, rainfall will increase by 7%, so floods will be more severe. This is inconsistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's confidence in increases in rainfall, river flooding or heavy rainfall, even though climate warming has exceeded a certain level over the past century. The BBC is basing this on pure speculation, not supported by evidence or the IPCC's own findings.
One thing that has almost certainly contributed to the high death tolls and massive damage caused by recent floods is the massive increase in the number of people exposed to flood hazards—the ever-expanding bullseye effect, see climate realism For example, repeatedly, here and here. Over the past century, Valencia's population has grown from 213,550 in 1900 to 1,582,387 residents in the urban area and 2,522,383 in the metropolitan area.
When more people move to floodplains, flood damage is greater and more people are harmed. This is especially true if government authorities do not revise flood plans as the population grows. Instead of asking how Spain has better coped with not-infrequent floods in the past, or how governments and planners can prepare for expected seasonal flood cycles in the future, the BBC shifts the conversation to assuming that current infrastructure is inadequate on the issue. Yet the 1957 floods taught us that extreme flooding has long tested Spain's infrastructure. In response to the catastrophic events of 1957, Valencia took direct action with the Sur Plan, which rerouted the Turia River to protect the city center from future flooding.
Unfortunately, new development along this diversion channel has resulted in new flood damage in areas different from the 1957 flood.
Let’s be clear: reducing meteorological complexity to cliche lines like “caused by climate change” cheapens the discussion. Spain's unique geography and centuries-old storm patterns deserve more attention. But as usual, the BBC offers an alarmist story on climate change that ignores history, science, common sense and responsibility. This is bad journalism that misleads the public and makes it harder for them to make rational decisions about the election and weather response.
Originally published in Climaterealism
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