Without climate change, flood peaks in Europe from Storm Boris would have been as much as 22% lower, models suggest

Flood peaks in central Europe from the calamitous 2024 Storm Boris would have been 14 to 22% lower without the influence of human-driven climate change, new models suggest. Precipitation, meanwhile, would have been 6 to 9% lower. “Anthropogenic climate change substantially amplified the flooding associated with Storm Boris beyond what would be expected when studying precipitation intensification alone,” Peter Miersch and colleagues write. Research shows that human-driven climate change has directly intensified extreme precipitation events. As such, it’s likely that climate change has also contributed to intensifying floods – but more studies must be done to define these relationships further. Miersch et al. used 2024’s Storm Boris as a case study to examine the influence of anthropogenic climate change on precipitation and flooding in central Europe. Using hydrological models, climate models, and a storyline framework (an approach that reconstructs a narrative through data), they determined that precipitation from Storm Boris would have been 6 to 9% lower if there was no anthropogenic forcing. Meanwhile, flood peak magnitude would have been 14 to 22% lower. Moreover, because of human-driven climate change, flood peaks increased by more than double the increase for event precipitation.