The Climate Context for ‘Unprecedented’ Balkans Flooding  					
-  							Published: May 20th, 2014
 
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								By 
Andrea Thompson 							
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 					 					  					 					 						 							 						 							 										  						  						  						  						  						 							The torrential rains and catastrophic floods that raged  through parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia were  unprecedented in the historical record of the region, going back 120  years. But 
extreme weather events like this one are something communities may have to contend with more and more as the planet warms, experts say.
  
Flooding in the Serbian town of Obrenovac, near the capital Belgrade, on May 19, 2014.
  The flooding event began on May 13 when an area of low pressure  developed as warm, moist air from over the Mediterranean Sea clashed  with colder air from the north. The low became cut-off from the jet  stream, which would ordinarily usher the system across the region —  instead, it remained parked over southeast Europe, dumping rain for  several days.
  Authorities in Bosnia and Serbia reported that about 4 inches of rain  fell on May 14 and 15, with larger downpours in some locations. In just  a few days, some areas received an amount of rain equivalent to one  third of their annual total, said Steven Bowen, an associate director  and meteorologist with the reinsurance group Aon Benfield.
  “We’re looking at a pretty unprecedented event,” Bowen told Climate  Central. It was at least a 1-in-100 year event for the region, he said.
  
  The flooding was so bad in part because the region had already seen  unusually strong rains since mid-April, so soils were saturated and  unable to soak up some of the tremendous excess. Instead, water went  crashing down slopes and into numerous streams and rivers of the Danube  watershed, many of which breached their banks and set record flood  levels.
  Dozens of deaths have been reported in the affected countries, and  initial estimates of the total damage are more than $1.4 billion. The  floodwaters have also washed away the signs that warn of fields of  landmines planted during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and may have  washed some of the mines themselves into the Danube watershed, 
according to news reports.
   								 									  										
 																			
	
 									  										 																		The torrential rains experienced in parts of southeast  Europe are evident in this map of rainfall totals across Europe from  May 11-17, 2014.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: NOAA 								 							
  The effects could have been worse, though, as the event was well  forecast by European and local meteorological agencies, said Dimitar  Ivanov, a meteorologist with the 
World Meteorological Organization.  The WMO has worked in the region to better train meteorologists to  forecast extreme weather events and to improve communication between  forecasters and civil authorities, Ivanov, who has been involved with  that work, said. In this case, Serbian and Bosnian authorities both  issued a “red warning” (the highest warning level) for rains and  flooding through 
MeteoAlarm, a platform aimed at providing comprehensive weather warnings across Europe, and which Bosnia just recently joined.
  “I believe that the information that was provided in advance of this  particular event really helped to minimize the losses,” Ivanov told  Climate Central.
  The WMO’s efforts to improve forecasting and disaster management  have, in part, been aimed at climate adaptation in the face of the  effects of global warming. Extreme weather events like this one could  become more common in the future in Europe, the latest report from the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded.
  The Balkans have experienced quite a few climate extremes in recent years, Ivanov said. The winter of 2011-2012 was one of the 
coldest, harshest winters  in decades, and was followed by an extremely hot, dry summer that  featured the worst drought in 40 years and helped fuel rampant  wildfires, according to a 
Huffington Post article at the time.
  “So we can see what is quite obviously a trend” of extreme weather, Ivanov said.
   								 									  										
 																			
	
 									  										 																		Southeast Europe had already seen higher-than-normal  precipitation in the month of April 2014, setting the stage for the  catastrophic flooding that struck parts of the region in May.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: NOAA 								 							
  In particular, the IPCC notes that 
extreme rainfall events  are expected to become more frequent. As Earth’s atmosphere warms with  increasing amounts of greenhouse gases, the amount of water vapor within  it increases, weighting the dice toward more substantial downpours even  in areas that are expected to become drier in the long term. Every  region of the U.S. has seen an increase in heavy downpours, for example,  with the most recent occurrence coming last month in Florida, when a  storm system dumped 10 to 15 inches of 
rain the Pensacola area in just 24 hours.
  
More heavy downpours  could increase flooding risks that “without adaptive measures, will  substantially increase flood damages,” according to the IPCC.
  In fact, the economic damage wrought by river floods has increased in  recent decades as more development in floodplains has put more people  and infrastructure in harm’s way, the IPCC noted. For example, the 
major floods  that struck central Europe last year caused $20 billion in damage,  Bowen said. All of which points to the need for better flood protection,  he said, not just in these parts of Europe, but across the world.
  “I think countries kind of need to be a little more proactive in terms of preparing for these kinds of events,” he said.