Vulnerabilities

The flooding of July 2021

Severe floods in mid-July 2021 killed at least 220 people in Germany and Belgium. The floods followed 2 days of heavy rain that caused several rivers in the region to burst their banks. The worst-hit areas were around the Ahr and Erft rivers in Germany and the Meuse in Belgium, which experienced the most rainfall in a 24–48-hour period since records began. According to a model study carried out by the ‘World Weather Attribution’ initiative, human-caused climate change had increased the rainfall intensity of such storms by 3–19%, relative to a pre-industrial climate 1.2 °C cooler than today (1). The study concludes that similar events can now be expected to hit any part of Western Europe, in a large region between the north of the Alps and the Netherlands,about once every 400 years. The authors state that the likelihood of such an event to occur today compared to a 1.2 °C cooler climate has increased by a factor between 1.2 and 9.

References

The references below are cited in full in a separate map 'References'. Please click here if you are looking for the full references for Luxemburg.

1. Kreienkamp et al. (2021)