GHG emissions linked to flooding in 2007

Greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions due to human activity substantially increased the odds of damaging floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000, according to new research from the University of Oxford.

The study, the first of its kind to model explicitly how such rising GHG concentrations increase the odds of a particular type of flood event in the UK, found a two-in-three chance that the odds were increased by about a factor of two or more.

Although these floods, which caused £1.3 billion worth of damage, could have occurred without GHG emissions, the study reveals that such discharges can now be blamed for increasing the odds of floods occurring at that time.

“Whether or not a flood occurs in any given year is still an ‘Act of God’ but we are beginning to see how human influence on climate may be starting to load God’s dice,” commented Professor Myles Allen, of the university’s Department of Physics and School of Geography and the Environment, and a co-author of the study.