Extreme floods ‘not solely caused by climate change’, study shows

Extreme flooding is not solely caused by climate change, a study has found.

Floods over the past 8,000 years have exceeded the extremes seen in recent decades, researchers at the University of Exeter discovered.

Recent floods, such as those in Valencia, Spain and across the UK last winter, have been linked to climate change and accompanied by warnings of being “unprecedented”. However, Prof Stephan Harrison, from the university’s College of Life and Environmental Sciences, said the new study found that many previous floods had exceeded the recent extremes.

By dating individual sand grains in floodplain sediments and analysing their size, the researchers were able to assess the frequency and scale of floods going back several thousand years.

“In recent years, floods around the world. including in Pakistan, Spain and Germany, have killed thousands of people and caused enormous damage,” said Prof Harrison.

“Such floods are seen as ‘unprecedented’ – but if you look back over the last few thousand years, that’s not the case. In fact, floods we call unprecedented may be nowhere near the most extreme that have happened in the past.”