For some experts, such as climatologist Jean Jouzel, the bad weather that hit Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands this week, causing significant flooding, is one of the manifestations of climate change linked to global warming. planetary.
ANALYSIS
Europe is in shock.
The toll of devastating floods crossed the threshold of 130 dead on Friday.
The west of Germany is particularly affected with a hundred deaths.
The disaster was at the heart of the electoral campaign which will appoint Angela Merkel's successor on September 26.
And many see these torrential rains as a sign of global warming caused by human activity.
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Phenomena that will multiply
For experts, there is no doubt that climate change has a share of responsibility in the multiplication of these extreme phenomena: droughts, heat waves, torrential rains and floods, as in recent days in Germany and Belgium. The climatologist Jean Jouzel has been warning about this for more than 20 years. "This is one of the key manifestations of global warming linked to human activities", he points out to Europe 1.
"We have hot summer air masses. These air masses contain a lot of water vapor. And when the rains do form, in these cases, they are intense. It is a phenomenon that s 'amplifies,' observes this scientist.
"I think we're going to have to get used to things like this more and more."
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The artificialization of soils
Other reasons may also favor these floods: in urban regions hit by floods, the artificialization of soils limits the absorption of rainfall. Experts therefore warn: establishing a link between this specific rainfall episode and global warming takes time. Like the studies carried out on the heat wave that hit Canada last month, French experts have already started analyzing rainfall data over several decades before making a decision.