In 2024, Europe experienced the largest floods in more than a decade.
Large parts of the continent were flooded during the year, with Valencia in Spain and central and eastern Europe the worst affected, the Copernicus Climate Change Office said.
These disasters occurred during the world's hottest year on record and highlight the threat that flooding poses to Europe as the world warms due to man-made climate change.
Storms and floods in 2024 killed more than 300 people, affected 413,000 others in Europe and caused at least €18 billion ($20.5 billion) in economic damage.
The year was one of the 10 wettest on the continent since 1950, Copernicus said in a new report produced with the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
"Europe recorded the most widespread flooding since 2013," Samantha Burgess of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which manages Copernicus' climate monitoring, told reporters ahead of the report's release.
Rainfall lasting up to three months fell in just five days in September, with Storm Boris bringing huge floods and widespread damage to eight countries in central and eastern Europe.
A month later, powerful storms triggered by warm and humid air from the Mediterranean dumped torrential rain on Spain, and the floods that followed devastated the eastern province of Valencia.
In 2024, most parts of western Europe experienced wetter than usual conditions, but eastern parts of the continent were drier and warmer on average. | BGNES. AFP
