A recent article by Euronews titled “Deadly Floods, Storms and Heat Waves: Europe suffers from severe impacts from climate change in 2024,” claiming that Europe is citing climate change, citing heat waves, wildfires, wildfires and flooding. [emphasis, links added]
This is wrong.
Europe has experienced many different kinds of bad weather throughout the continent in 2024, but this is not uncommon.
Although part of the story is hidden behind the payroll wall, the EuroNews post details several examples of the supposed extreme weather events of climate change last year.
The main mentions are wildfires in Portugal, floods in Valencia, Spain and heat waves in parts of the continent.
“Storms are usually severe, floods are common, and some of the continents are attracted by record heat waves,” Euronews said.
“Wildfires in Portugal burned 110,000 hectares of land in one week, which is one quarter of the annual burnt area in Europe in 2024,” EuroNews said of claims about the wildfire.
Fortunately, Europe Copernicus Service published a status report on the European-European Report, which based on its coverage, released an annual wildfire report and decomposed it by country.
According to their data, Portugal has not suffered any long-term trend in increasing the size or number of wildfires. (Please refer to the picture below)
Fire trends will vary in countries and regions across Europe, but satellite data does not indicate a deterioration in fires in Europe, as discussed in detail here, wildfires are declining worldwide.
The floods in Valencia, Spain are also not unprecedented.
As Climate Realism The news covered when the news was live in “Facts of Flooding with Climate Hysteria: BBC Ignoring Spain’s Weather History.” Valencia suffered similar floods in 1897, 1957 and 1996, and warmed for decades.
The intergovernmental panel on climate change itself does not itself show that there is no evidence of increased flooding or substantial precipitation. (Please refer to the picture below)
Similarly, while parts of Europe suffered from heat waves last year, heat waves themselves do not prove any devastating effects of global warming.
In heat waves, global average temperatures do not necessarily lead to higher temperature spikes.
Peer reviewed publications in May 2022, attribution and forecasting heat waves are hard: We can do better, say:
However, land use changes, vegetation changes, irrigation, air pollution, and other changes have also driven local and regional trends in heat waves. Sometimes they enhance heat wave intensity, but can also offset the effects of climate change, and in some regions, mechanisms that affect heat wave trends have not been fully identified.
The biggest impact on temporary heatwave events is the natural El Niño warming period in the Pacific, which results in higher temperatures than average.
El Niño is quite powerful in 2023 and 2024, which affects temperature anomalies worldwide, and as explained in the post “No, CNN and BBC, 2024”, this is not the hottest year when all the evidence is available. ”
Even Wikipedia says 23/24 ElNiño as the reason for the bad weather event:
“ 2023–2024 child In recorded history, it is considered the fifth most powerful El Niño-Southern oscillation event, causing widespread droughts, floods and other natural disasters around the world. ”
Most importantly, the data does not show long-term trends in Europe for extreme heat or prolonged heat waves, which is a trend that indicates climate change is a trend behind heat waves this year.
All in all, this seems to be another intimidation story, where all available evidence is not considered when trying to attribute weather events to climate change.
Euronews should stick to this news, rather than facilitating the spin of the alarm for every weather event that follows.
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