With extreme weather killing more than 150 people in Europe and searing heat across parts of North America, the debate around climate change has grown more fierce in recent weeks.

But can global warming really be blamed for these very different, isolated events in different parts of the world?

According to Jean Jouzel, a climatologist and former vice-president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is a "plausible" link, though it has not been proven yet.

"Unfortunately, we are in the early stages of global warming, and what lies ahead will be even worse," he told AFP.

"We must not kid ourselves that climate change is limited to a few isolated disasters or to one region or time period."

In Europe, masses of air loaded with water were blocked at high altitude by cold temperatures, leading them to stagnate for four days over the region and dump torrents of rain, Jouzel said.

"The phenomenon is familiar to meteorologists, but it has been 100 years since it last occurred on this scale," he said.

- Huge rainfall -

"In just two days, the region saw the same amount of rainfall it would normally experience in two or three months -- the kind of event that might sometimes be seen in Mediterranean climates in the autumn, but not at these latitudes."

Scientists will now have to analyse the event to determine precisely why it happened, he said.

"Science takes time, but I believe we will have an answer soon enough," he said.

As to whether global warming was directly responsible for the catastrophe, the expert said: "We have our suspicions, but they are not scientific facts. We have to take the time to analyse the event."

On the other hand, the IPCC has for some time been predicting an intensification of extreme events of this kind, particularly rainfall, he points out.

"Scientists have already observed a sharp increase in extreme precipitation over the last 20 years, particularly in the Mediterranean," he said.

- 'Not up to the task' -

"It is clear that if more water evaporates because it is warmer, that will technically lead to more precipitation and more episodes of violent rainfall."

There is a real risk that events like this will increase in the coming years and decades, Jouzel believes.

If the Earth's temperature rises by three or four degrees, events like droughts, heatwaves and floods will become more frequent and intense, he said.

Having the right infrastructure to deal with such events will then be the only way to avoid human tragedy -- such as the devastating effects of recent 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) temperatures in Canada.

"I don't think there is enough awareness, and I'm not sure that people understand the seriousness of the problem. The political decision-makers, in particular, are not up to the task," Jouzel said.

Floods push climate change to front of German election campaign
Berlin (AFP) July 16, 2021 - The climate emergency was already prominent in the campaign for September elections in Germany, but devastating floods have further shone the spotlight on what has become an urgent issue for the main candidates.

More than 100 people were killed in western Germany in what has been dubbed a "flood of death" that crashed on to houses in a violent storm overnight Wednesday, sweeping them away, uprooting trees and leaving a trail of despair in its wake.

As the country struggles to come to terms with the tragedy, politicians have so far broadly refrained from politicising the issue.

But news magazine Der Spiegel said global warming had "returned to the election campaign and needs to stay there".

"'Who will protect us?' is now a question that will play a central role," political scientist Karl-Rudolf Korte told ZDF public television.

A Green lawmaker who had slammed the policies of rival parties just as the tragedy unfolded deleted his tweet, accused of shamelessly using the event for personal gain.

However political leaders have increasingly pinpointed climate change as a cause of the tragedy.

Armin Laschet, the conservative running to succeed Angela Merkel in the election on September 26, called for "speeding up" efforts to fight climate change, underlining the link between global warming and extreme weather.

He is the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, one of the two worst-hit states along with neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate.

In a densely populated area of Germany where big cities like Duesseldorf, Cologne and Bonn are located, entire villages were devastated when the rivers broke their banks.

"The fact that people are dying in a highly industrialised country because of extreme weather conditions... simply shows that we are increasingly reaching the limits of our adaptive capacity," warned meteorologist Mojib Latif, a researcher at the Kiel Institute of Marine Sciences, in the daily Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung.

- 'Our responsibility' -

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, of Merkel's conservative Union bloc, stressed that Germany must "prepare much better" for climate change.

So quick were some leaders to rush to the disaster zones that they drew criticism from Robert Habeck, co-leader of the Green party.

"It is now the time for rescuers and not the time for politicians who just stand in the way," he said on his Instagram account.

He acknowledged however that it was legitimate for local officials to get an idea of what was happening on the ground.

The Greens are behind the conservatives in the polls, burnt by a series of missteps by their candidate Annalena Baerbock, the party's other leader.

And while politicians have been cautious about challenging climate policies implemented during Merkel's 16 years in power as the tragedy remains raw, activists have spoken out.

"The catastrophic consequences of the heavy rains of the last few days are largely our own responsibility," said Holger Sticht, head of the North Rhine-Westphalia branch of the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation.

He pointed to construction in flood zones, and deforestation on slopes that could once have held back some of the rain.

- Impossible to prevent? -

For Ursula Heinen-Esser, environment minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, climate change was the main cause of the tragedy.

"The challenge is that sometimes we have to deal with extreme drought and sometimes extremely heavy rains," she told local newspaper Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.

The soil was "barely able to absorb more water due to the drought in previous years and the rainfall in recent weeks", she said, adding that in this situation it was "practically impossible to react in the short term".

Scientists though gave a more damning assessment.

Hannah Cloke, hydrology professor at Reading University in the UK, said that "for so many people to die in floods in Europe in 2021 represents a monumental failure of the system".

"The sight of people driving or wading through deep floodwater fills me with horror, as this is about the most dangerous thing you can do in a flood," she said.

"Forecasters could see this heavy rain coming and issued alerts early in the week, and yet the warnings were not taken seriously enough and preparations were inadequate.

"These kinds of high-energy, sudden summer torrents of rain are exactly what we expect in our rapidly heating climate."

Related Links
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Germany floods push climate change to front of election campaign
Berlin (AFP) July 16, 2021
The climate emergency was already prominent in the campaign for September elections in Germany, but devastating floods have further shone the spotlight on what has become a hot button issue for all candidates. More than 100 people were killed in western Germany in what has been dubbed a "flood of death" that crashed on to houses in a violent storm overnight Wednesday, sweeping them away, uprooting trees and leaving a trail of despair in its wake. As the country struggles to come to terms with th ... read more