11
September 2003
Climate and geography: Taken at the floods
In August last year the big news was the severe flooding across central Europe, as the Elbe broke its banks in Dresden and other German cities, fed in part by floodwater from the Vltava river that had earlier flooded the Czech capital of Prague. Five years previously the Oder river had caused similar havoc in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany. These well publicized events, together with evidence that globally, the incidence of severe flooding has increased in recent decades, have created the general impression that something malign — global warming is the favourite culprit — is afoot and that the situation can only get worse. But newly collated data, dating back to the year 1021 (for the Elbe) and 1269 (for the Oder), suggest that taking the long view, so far there is no upward trend in the incidence in extreme flooding in this region of central Europe.
No upward trends in the occurrence of extreme
floods in central Europe
MANFRED MUDELSEE, MICHAEL BÖRNGEN, GERD TETZLAFF &
UWE GRÜNEWALD
Nature 425, 166–169 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01928
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