Award-winning hydrologist Hannah Cloke, who set up the European Flood Alert System, a European Union program to warn of floods in time, says authorities received warnings over the weekend. Cloke set up her program after the tragic floods in Europe in 2002 to prevent similar disasters. However, according to her, the current floods have pointed to weaknesses in the system.
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In some areas, according to Cloke, the program served its purpose and the warning fell on fertile ground. But the hydrologist admits that “in some other places there was no warning to people who did not know what would happen.”
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“We should not have so many deaths due to floods in 2021. It’s just unacceptable and something is wrong,” the hydrologist emphasizes.
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The ruined town of Altenahr
Photo: Michael Probst, CTK / AP
The mechanisms for predicting floods and issuing warnings vary from one European country to another. In Germany, according to Cloke, these structures are fragmented and involve many offices in different Länder, so responses to danger may vary.
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A spokesman for the German Meteorological Institute, Deutscher Wetterdienst, said the service had issued several warnings of extreme rainfall. According to him, it is then up to the individual authorities to assess the flood danger and, if necessary, to proceed with the evacuation of people or other measures.
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The Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of the Environment, one of the countries most affected by the current floods, said flood warnings were issued for the largest rivers, but that information on tributaries and smaller rivers was less detailed, so floods could not always be averted.
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Aerial shots of Germany
Video: Reuters
Climatologist Friederike Ott, deputy director of the Institute for Environmental Change at Oxford University, sees an urgent need for flood education. “In my opinion, people are not sufficiently aware that the weather can be deadly,” Ott emphasizes.
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“The fact that large areas of land are built up also leads to more dramatic consequences than it would be if water could soak in,” says the climatologist.
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Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer said that Germany must “prepare much better in the future”. According to him, the current situation is the result of climate change.
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Many factors contribute to floods, but the warming atmosphere due to climate change means that extreme rainfall is more likely. Hayley Fowler, who teaches the effects of climate change at the University of Newcastle, explains that global warming slows down the jet stream, or the flow of air in the atmosphere from west to east. As a result, thunderstorms move more slowly. More humidity is also retained in a warmer atmosphere.
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“Extreme rainfall will intensify and the most extreme ones will be more frequent,” Fowler warns. According to her, states must rebuild their infrastructure in order to be able to face these events.
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However, he adds that it is impossible to prepare perfectly for similar events. “There can always be something that goes beyond our flood control systems. That’s why we really need emergency management systems and warning systems,” he says.
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Michael Ahrend of the German district of Ahrweiler, where on Friday afternoon after the water subsided, people used shovels and brooms to remove mud from homes and shops, told Reuters: “I thought the water would come one day, but I didn’t expect something like that. This is not a war. it just hit nature. We should finally pay attention to it. “
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