The consequences of the torrential rains that hit the province of Valencia last October were devastating and will be remembered for years. Their deadly impact — a court is investigating whether the regional authorities’ mismanagement of the emergency exacerbated the disaster — was enormous: in just a few tragic hours, 232 people died in Valencia due to flooding, representing 70% of all deaths linked to torrential rains in Europe throughout 2024.

This is the conclusion drawn from the 2024 European State of the Climate Report, published Tuesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a subsidiary of the European Commission, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The study compiles weather trends and events from last year on a continent that is warming faster than the rest due to human-caused climate change. As was the case across the Earth’s surface as a whole, 2024 was the warmest year on record in Europe since direct measurements began. And a warmer planet often means more extreme and frequent weather events, such as heat waves and episodes of waterspouts and flooding.

The chapter on torrential rains and storms highlights how these events “affected an estimated 413,000 people in Europe” and caused “at least 335 lives lost” last year. Of these, according to the document, at least 232 people died in Valencia during the October DANA (the Spanish acronym for Isolated Depression at High Levels). “Damage to infrastructure and economic losses were severe, totaling approximately €16.5 billion,” it adds, referring to the cold snap, which also hit the Spanish provinces of Albacete, Cuenca, and Málaga. This event also accounted for the majority of flood-related economic losses in Europe last year, which the study estimates at “at least €18 billion.”

According to Copernicus, in 2024, 30% of Europe’s rivers experienced flows exceeding the high flood threshold (i.e., floods that occur every five years), while 12% of the river network experienced flows exceeding the severe flood threshold (i.e., those with a 20-year frequency). “Europe experienced the most widespread flooding since 2013,” says Samantha Burgess, Climate Strategy Director at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and one of the coordinators of the analysis presented on Tuesday.

The chapter on torrential rains analyzes two specific flooding events in 2024: the Valencia flood in late October and Storm Boris, which caused extreme rainfall in Central and Eastern Europe in the second half of September. Flooding occurred in parts of Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Italy. Scientific attribution analyses have been published for both cases, suggesting that climate change fueled these torrential rains.

The Copernicus and WMO report not only analyzes what has already happened, but also what is expected for the future. “Europe is one of the regions with the largest projected increase in flood risk,” it explains, based on what has already been established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), affiliated with the United Nations. In its latest review of scientific knowledge on climate change, this panel of experts noted that “an increase in extreme precipitation and surface water flooding is expected in all regions of Europe.”

As previously observed, “between 1960 and 2010, river flood risks increased in Western and Central Europe and the United Kingdom by 11% per decade and decreased in Eastern and Southern Europe by 23% per decade.” “The three most recent decades saw the highest number of floods in the past 500 years,” the authors summarize. As global warming progresses, problems will worsen. “Every additional fraction of a degree of temperature rise matters because it accentuates the risks to our lives, to economies and to the planet,” Secretary-General of the WMO Celeste Saulo warned in the Copernicus-WMO report. “Adaptation is a must,” she added.

Behind tragedies like the one experienced in Valencia last fall is the intensification of extreme events due to climate change, but also the lack of oversight in urban planning and construction in flood zones. The report emphasizes the importance of preparing for climate change: “51% of European cities have adopted dedicated climate adaptation plans, representing encouraging progress from 26% in 2018,” the authors state.

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