-- The low-pressure weather system that unleashed unprecedented amounts of rain across the eastern Mediterranean last week was made more likely and more intense by climate change.
The Mediterranean basin is warming 20% faster than the rest of the planet, according to the United Nations. While the region is becoming drier overall, climate change is making weather harder to predict and contributing to violent storms that release large amounts of rain in very short periods of time. That, coupled with a lack of preparedness on the ground, lead to close to 4,000 deaths in Libya.
Such extreme cases of heavy rainfall are now reasonably common, the WWA scientists said, and can be expected once in every decade. That’s a 10% chance of happening every year in the large region that includes Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey. In central Greece, such an event is only expected to happen once every 80 to 100 years.
The WWA study found that the heavy rains that hit Libya in the early hours of Sept. 11 are expected to happen around once in 300 to 600 years in the current climate. Global warming increased their intensity by as much as 50%. More than 10,000 people are still missing in the city of Derna as rescue teams work against the clock to find survivors.
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