I was sorry to read of the serious floods on a couple of tributaries to the Rhine. Erftstadt was among the cluster of badly affected towns and is twinned with Wokingham. Wokingham sends condolences for the loss of lives in this disaster, and sympathy for all whose homes and lives have been disrupted. The pictures reveal the brute force of too much water scouring away roads and foundations, tossing cars into heaps of wreckage and reshaping the landscape in an unwelcome way. We wish the rescue services well and hope early action can be taken to restore essential services and provide homes for those who are suffering.
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July 19, 2021
Having been told that weather is not climate, they have been very quick to declare the floods in Europe as proof of climate change. Odd that , especially when a Met scientist, in an effort of divert criticism of the weather forecasters failure to predict the floods, said they needed more computing power to do that. They have also declared the hot weather in the US and Canada as climate change, but not the 40 year record cold spell Oz suffered with heavy snow in Sydney etc.
July 19, 2021
Climate change is a convenient excuse for almost everything for government and businesses. Predicting floods a few hours before they happen is not actually that difficult. You get sufficient notice of heavy rain fall before and as it falls, streams and river levels rising etc. to warn and evacuate at risk areas.
Millions of times easier than predicting the climate in 100 years time that is for sure. Especially as for the latter you do not even have most of the input data you need.
July 19, 2021
@Iain Moore; The bad weather, and thus likelihood of flooding, WAS forecast, the Germany govt and Federal authorities are actually under great criticisms that they did not act on the German Met-offices warning, from what I have read/heard in the English language German media. Angela Merkel appears to be pushing her Climate theories again in an attempt to stave off such criticisms.
July 19, 2021
Indeed, Jerry. The authorities over the border in Belgium and Luxemburg took flood precautions, following the forecast. The German authorities seemed to be more interested in Covid ‘cases’ and vaccine takeup, though. Plus fawning over Angela Merkel’s meeting with her boss Joe Biden last Thursday.
July 19, 2021
There is a very good and detailed explanation of the Pacific North West heat wave from local meteorologist Cliff Mass (a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington) that has been republished at the notalotofpeopleknowthat website, which almost entirely debunks that “climate” attribution (he considers a background climate warming of 1 degree F, against unusual weather contributing 40 degrees F). Do not expect this to be presented on the BBC.
Likewise, it is clear that similar flooding has occurred in Germany on many occasions in the past, so this is not some new “climate” artifact. Perhaps one of the regrettable features is that weather forecasting was good enough to warn of the risk of severe flooding some days ahead and the areas that would be hit, and yet it appears little or no precautionary action was taken that might have at least saved lives, if not property other than small valuables and personal documents. I gather also that dams were left full despite the forecasts: lowering levels would have substantially reduced the risks from overtopping and even dam failure. It seems like shades of the failures we have seen at our own Environmental Agency that have led to flooding as a result of their own inaction.
July 19, 2021
Sorry, the ECMWF forecast that feeds the European Flood Awareness System had the following (point) precipitation for Erftstadt:
700 mm between 00Z on 13/07 and 24Z on 15/07 in its forecast issued at 00Z on 11/07,
640 mm between 00Z on 13/07 and 24Z on 15/07 in its forecast issued at 00Z on 12/07,
456 mm between 06Z on 14/07 and 18Z on 15/07 in its forecast issued at 00Z on 13/07,
So this set of weather forecasts was rather correct both in the timing and the amount of rain about to fall. This weather forecast information (not pointwise for Erftstadt as presented above but over a much larger area) is fed to the EFAS, which deals with the precipitation captured over the ābasinā area given the prevalent orography. It has to be noted that ECMWF global forecasts (at 9 km resolution) are not the only ones used, those from the Deutscher Wetterdienst (at 2 km resolution) are used over Germany and nearby countries.
It appears the flood warnings were very imperfectly passed to the public, with people made aware of the risks to properties 36 hours in advance, some not getting any information at all.
There clearly were deficiencies in how the information was distributed in the chain from EFAS to the national to regional to the very local level.
July 19, 2021
One fervently hopes that out of this terrible disaster that there will be lessons for the learning.
How many government departments, utility organisations, public and civil services have their “what if worse case disaster scenarios” plans in place and the necessary trained personnel and equipment available for that dreaded call?
The planet will continue to throw challenges as it has always done , so unlike the sheer lemming like charge to combat climate change it might be a better investment to the world and its populations to live with it and ensure when these disasters strike the elements to reduce the damage and protect life and property have been well trained for and put in place.
July 19, 2021
People are trying their hardest to do both.
There will still be disasters notwithstanding.
July 19, 2021
Indeed the tremendous flood damage and a yet to be determined death toll (over 1000 people are missing across Germany and Belgium) is most unfortunate.
A new study by Newcastle University and the Met Office has found that climate change is driving a large increase in intense, slow-moving storms,
Led by Dr. Abdullah Kahraman, of Newcastle University’s School of Engineering, the researchers used very detailed climate model simulations using the supercomputer at at the UK Met Office Hadley Centre. They found that slower storm movement acts to increase the amount of rainfall that accumulates locally, increasing the risk of flash floods across Europe beyond what had been expected, based on previous studies.
As the scientific evidence of climate change mounts, Prof Hayley Fowler, of Newcastle University’s School of Engineering, added: “Governments across the world have been too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming continues apace”
July 19, 2021
Confirmation bias?
July 19, 2021
No, Some months ago I had quoted some studies discussing the decrease in the temperature gradient between the equatorial and the polar regions (likely due to climate change with decrease albedo of northern polar areas and resultant relative heating of these areas) which on a rotating planet makes the jet stream potentially more sinuous and likely in some circumstances (that scientists are trying to decipher) to ālockā for several hours/days over a given area. That appears to explain a number of huge precipitation events seen over the last few years.
July 19, 2021
There is no scientific evidence for “climate change”. There are computer models. The pandemic has shown how useless these are.
July 19, 2021
@John Miller
+100
There is no evidence to link an “increase in intense, slow-moving storms” with alleged man made climate change – It’s all in the minds of those fiddling the modelling process
July 19, 2021
Funny, they worked quite well for landing probes on Mars, designing aircraft flight frames, and for all manner of other things
July 20, 2021
The difference is we know Newton’s gravitational constant as 6.67430 +/-0.00015 x 10^-11 m^3/kg/s^2, and electromagnetism theory is know to be accurate to 1 part in at least 10^8, whereas we only have a vague idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 may lie somewhere between 1.2 and 3. On that basis, trying to send a rocket to Mars would likely end up going beyond Pluto. It doesn’t then matter how big your computer is – the model starts with huge uncertainty that the computer cannot resolve.
July 20, 2021
You are right with your constants, the problem with your argument is two-fold: one, the āclimate sensivity parameterā is not an input of climate models, it is a quantity defined post-hoc, and two (and more to the point) weather forecast models are run for a couple of days (up to 10 days) starting from observations of T, p, RH, winds, ā¦
July 19, 2021
I read that the models are not able to do this, and so there is now an appeal for an even bigger ~billion pound computer to try to provide some support for this theory.
The reality is that weather has always been variable.
July 20, 2021
I do not know where you read that. You might get a bit more information on the EFAS, ECMWF, EUMetSat, and Copernicus websites. But prepare your crucifix and some garlic: they are all linked one way or another with European agencies (but not strictly EU, with some UK participation).
BTW (a bit unrelated) one of, if not the pioneer of weather forecasting was Lewis Fry Richardson, an Englishman. In a way it is rather curious that the average English(wo)man can only make statements as yours above without having checked what has actually been happening in the field of meteorology (in situ, remote sensing from satellites, weather forecast models, ensemble weather prediction, ā¦).
July 21, 2021
Wrong analogy. If climate models cannot resolve the sensitivity parameter better than that, they are not going to provide accurate forecasts. We are discussing climate forecasts, not weather forecasts. Of course, a big part of the problem is that climate and weather are both complex chaotic systems, which means that forecasting becomes essentially impossible beyond a limited time horizon anyway. The feedbacks are too complex to be modelled properly, and the data inputs are wholly inadequate for specifying the initial conditions.
This is always used as an excuse for asking for bigger computers to allow the models to be run at higher time and spatial resolutions in the hope that accuracy can be improved. It is far from clear that these “more sophistcated” models have any greater skill at forecasting climate, even if they can produce a lot more pseudo detail to fill up the journals and newspapers.
I am surprised you missed the Met Office announcement.
Up to Ā£1.2 billion investment has been confirmed for a state-of-the-art supercomputer to improve severe weather and climate forecasting
July 22, 2021
Mark, be serious, will you. Are you not making a wrong analogy yourself? We are not talking climate models here, but weather forecast models, which were in the right ball park in terms of location and intensity of the precipitation. What went wrong was how the information was passed to the public, not a āscientificā problem, but much more an administrative one.
As for the chaotic system, what about you reading about Ensemble Prediction Systems or Ensemble Forecasts and learning about how the uncertainties in the observations used in the initial conditions are then used to create sets of slightly different initial conditions for the same starting date, and using the original findings if Edward N. Lorenz, this set of N resultant forecasts for the same 5- or 10-day period is processed to provide probabilities of the range of T, winds, precipitation, ā¦ over a point or an area.
This type of work has been going on in weather centres from the mid-1990s. ECMWF has produced a āFactsheet: Ensemble Weather Forecastingā, 23 March 2017.
BTW, ECMWF is part of Wokingham District and I guess of Sir Johnās constituency. I wonder whether he has ever visited the place in his almost 34 years as a MP.
July 22, 2021
Oops āof Edward N. Lorenzā and āprobabilities for the rangeā
July 19, 2021
These are the biggest floods in Germany since 1962. Thatās odd, bigger floods almost 60 years ago when CO2 levels were lower- how do the climate model explain that ? If Merkel believes itās due to climate change how come sheās not shutting down her coal fired power stations until 2038 ?
I see the fake SAGE supremo Sir David King also runs a climate change group. Probably use the same models !
July 19, 2021
The Plattland of north western Germany and the Low Countries (the clue being in their names) were hit by far worse flooding in 1953 and in 1962, and in over past centuries there have been frequent such events, all duly recorded in the newspapers and historical annals climatologists appear incapable of studying, as they remain addictively glued to their career-enhancing computer future-modelling.
The serious effects of the present floods are largely due to increased population density and EU environmental policies in the affected areas (analogously to the problems of the Somerset Levels), so the floods in themselves provide no scientific evidence for increased global warming.
July 19, 2021
Good morning.
Here here.
July 19, 2021
Decent people everywhere will join with John in his expression of support for and sympathy with these stricken people.
These are the worst floods in living memory in Germany, and likely the worst ever recorded in Belgium.
I warmly and heartily commend the solidarity in the form of people and materiel being sent to the stricken regions by fellow European Union member countries, and I hope that the mere fact of the UK’s exit will not exclude this country from doing whatever it might to assist too.
July 19, 2021
That is laced with typical grotesque cynicism from the warped mind of a Remain zealot. Helping others in distress has nothing to do with politics so for you to exploit the deaths of people to make a political statement is utterly abhorrent
July 19, 2021
I thank John for allowing this unusual comment to speak for itself.
July 19, 2021
I’ve been to Germany on holiday three times. I love the place and love the people.
We can give them some of our debauched currency if you like. I’m sure that they are more than capable of managing this one themselves and of the Germans I know they will smile kindly at your donation and probably say “That’s OK. Nice of you to offer though.”
July 19, 2021
Yes, I used to work there and in other Mainland countries.
I wasn’t writing about money.
July 20, 2021
Oh but you clearly were. Unless you have discovered a magic way for state governments to offer ‘people and materiel’ to other state governments without its costing any money.
(EU countries offering EU-organized help to other EU countries is evened out in the net budget payments, so it is not quite the act of heroic altruism you try to make it appear.)
July 19, 2021
Fully agree John.
I understand that the Wokingham Mayor has been in touch with their Erftstadt counterpart, asking if and what help may be required, I am sure Wokingham people and others will rise to the call to help in any way they can.
Thoughts go out to all who have been affected.
July 19, 2021
If only the German authorities had listened to the warnings given about expected heavy rain – They didn’t, simply ignored them, and ordinary people have paid the cost.
The environmentalists are always so ready to blame such events on alleged MMCC, but forget to mention things they had a hand in – Like straightening out the bends in the river – which is the real cause of the devastation.
In earlier times, of heavy rain, the flow of water would have been slowed, but in a river with no bends the water just rushes down at an increasing pace to overwhelm everything – Thanks Environmentalists!
July 19, 2021
Quite so, and the canalisation of major rivers, of which the Rhine is an exemplar, with the concomitant bypassing of marshlands and large areas of floodplain which acted as ‘buffers’ to flooding are responsible. As is the deforestation of the alpine regions. Just my O level geography (1960) coming to mind…
July 19, 2021
They had 180 litres of rain per square metre.
That’s more than in living memory.
July 20, 2021
That’s 18cm, or just over 7 inches in two days. However, you don’t need to have lived all that long to go back to the flooding of the Elbe in 2002, which produced records of 31.2 cm – over 1 ft – in a standard meteorological day, and 35.3cm in a continuous 24 hour period, both records set over 12-13 August at Zinnwald Georgenfeld in Sachsen.
July 20, 2021
They’re of a similar order, and the point is that it is not the absolute comparison which is significant, it is the increasing *frequency* of events which were judged previously – like the UK floods – to be “once in 500 year events” but which are now happening every few decades or years.
2002 is part of the same “present” in climate timescale terms anyway.
July 21, 2021
Shifting your ground when presented with facts? Here’s another fact for you to cope with:
Far from predicting more summer rainfall in the German Rhineland, climate models have tended to do the opposite: to predict less.
Moreover, if you search for
Die Ahr und ihre Hƶchwasser in alten Quellen
(The Ahr and its floods from historic sources)
you will find a listing of floods on the river going back to 1370 which shows there were plenty of events in the past, and no evidence of increasing frequency. You can’t have it both ways.
July 20, 2021
and it was the river water that did the damage, destroying homes and wrecking street – Rain doesn’t do that on its own
July 20, 2021
This very sorry event resulted in numerous deaths which can ne be placed at the hand of the Government. the flooding of the river was an infrastructure issue and I am not an engineer but I read that the the two principal communities were built on flood plains. I have no idea if that is correct. What is true is that the Government was in possession of serious warnings of the possible rainfall and could have organised the evacuation of residents in the affected areas and well in advance of the deluge. They did not and I hope our Government take notice that post event blame attaching to climate change is no excuse for their ineptitude.
July 21, 2021
Seriously, you do not really care. Itās just empty words.