By Anthony Watts and H. Sterling Burnett
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) article, titled “Scientists sure warming world made Spain’s storm more intense,” ties recent flash flooding in Spain to climate change. This is false. Data refutes claims that flooding has gotten worse in Europe amid modestly warming temperatures. In addition, the story ignores Spain’s long history of sometimes catastrophic floods due to many of its cities being situated in narrow mountain valleys.
“No doubt about it, these explosive downpours were intensified by climate change,” Friederike Otto, Ph.D., who is co-leader of World Weather Attribution (WWA), told the BBC. “With every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, leading to heavier bursts of rainfall.”
The problem is, neither Otto nor the BBC cited any data to back up the claim that this storm’s moisture content was enhanced by warming, because none exists. Rather the attribution is based on the projections of flawed computer models and is typical of the type of “research” quickly published by WWA. As with all of WWA studies Climate Realism has discussed previously, they suffer from the logical fallacy of assuming what they are attempting to prove. WWA’s research assumes climate change causes or contributes to a particular weather event and then uses computer models to project how big the effect was. That is not how one conducts science. Climate Realism has refuted similar attribution claims on multiple occasions, here, here, and here for instance.
The recent terrible flooding across the Spanish province of Valencia has claimed more than 200 lives, but there is no evidence the flooding was historically unusual. Reviewing the historical context of flooding in the area shows it has experienced recurring severe floods. The BBC article claims of “increased atmospheric moisture” and rising temperatures to explain the event, but other meteorologists, as mentioned by the BBC, said the event was driven by the common “gota fría” weather pattern, also known as a “cold drop” and recently named DANA in meteorology texts. It is a weather event that commonly brings cold air from northern latitudes over the warm Mediterranean, leading to sudden and intense rainfall.
The recent storm that hit Spain is consistent with its long history of severe autumnal storms. Gota Fria’s have not become more common or severe during the recent period of modest warming.
Valencia, which sits along and at the mouth of the Turia River on the Mediterranean Sea, suffered similar flooding, for example, in 1897, 1957, and 1996, 127, 67, and 28 years of warming ago, respectively, when temperatures were cooler than at present. Dozens of people died in each of those floods. The historical account of Valencia’s 1957 flooding, as documented by Caroline Angus, presents a well-known pattern of extreme rainfall events in the region, long before the age of alleged climate change. On October 14, 1957, an unprecedented flood struck Valencia, releasing nearly 6,000 cubic meters of water per second into the city. Towns around Valencia, including Pedralba and Vilamarxant, saw record rainfall, causing massive flooding that impacted thousands of lives and required years of recovery efforts.
This 1957 flood event was not an anomaly but part of a natural cycle that Spaniards have come to recognize as a seasonal threat from the Mediterranean’s temperature dynamics and terrain. That storm dumped about a foot of rain in 2 days, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (said to drive climate change) were just 314 parts per million (ppm), compared to the 422 ppm measured today.
As Caroline Angus’s account of the 1957 Valencia flood reveals, these conditions are neither new nor unprecedented. The BBC’s focus on “climate change” and a warmer atmosphere as the primary cause of the recent flooding ignores the atmospheric mechanics behind these storms and downplays the recurrent pattern of similar natural events. It also too easily dismisses the well-known gota fria phenomenon, despite the BBC itself writing, “[w]eather researchers say the likely main cause of the intense rainfall was a natural weather event [gota fria] that hits Spain in Autumn and Winter.” Any links to climate change are based solely on rapid, non-peer reviewed attribution claims, not data.
From a science perspective, BBC made a glaring omission by not referencing the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which finds little evidence of increased precipitation. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) provides an assessment of confidence levels in precipitation trends.
According to Chapter 12, Table 12.12, (seen below) the IPCC expresses “low confidence” in a clear trend for increases in heavy precipitation in southern Europe, including the Mediterranean basin, even under flawed high-emission climate model scenarios like RCP8.5.
Unable to completely ignore the fact that natural weather systems dominate rainfall patterns, in Spain and elsewhere, the BBC suggested, the flooding was worsened because each degree of warming causes a 7% increase in rainfall. This does not align with the IPCC’s low confidence in any increase in rainfall, river flooding, or heavy precipitation, at present despite more than a degree of warming over the past century. The BBC are engaging in pure speculation, not backed by evidence or the IPCC’s own findings.
One thing that almost certainly contributed to the high death toll and massive damage of the recent flood is the huge increase of population in harm’s way of flooding – the expanding bullseye effect discussed at Climate Realism repeatedly, here and here, for example. Valencia’s population over the past century has grown from 213,550 inhabitants in 1900 to 1,582,387 residents within the urban area and 2,522,383 people in the metropolitan region.
When more people move to flood zones, more damage results when flooding does, and more people are harmed. This is especially true if government authorities don’t revise flood planning as the population grows. Instead of asking how Spain might have planned better in the past for floods that aren’t unusual, or how the government and planners might prepare for an anticipated seasonal flood cycle going forward, the BBC shifts the dialogue to an assumed inadequacy of current infrastructure to withstand “new” extremes. Yet the 1957 floods show us that extreme floods have long tested Spain’s infrastructure. In response to the catastrophic 1957 event, Valencia took direct action with the Plan Sur, diverting the Turia River to protect the city center from future flooding.
Unfortunately, new development along that diversion channel allowed for new flood damage in areas different from that of the 1957 flood.
Let’s be clear: reducing meteorological complexity to a tired “climate change did it” line cheapens the discussion. Spain’s unique geography and centuries-old storm patterns deserve more than sensationalist fluff. But as is typical, the BBC offers an alarmist tale wrapped in a pretty climate-change bow, leaving out history, science, common sense, and accountability. That’s shoddy journalism, misinforming the public, thus making it harder for them to make rational decisions about elections and responses to weather.
