Nesje et al. (2001) analyzed a sediment core from a lake in southern Norway in an attempt to determine the frequency and magnitude of prior floods in that region. The last thousand years of the record revealed "a period of little flood activity around the Medieval period (AD 1000-1400)," which was followed by a period of extensive flood activity that was associated with the "post-Medieval climate deterioration characterized by lower air temperature, thicker and more long-lasting snow cover, and more frequent storms associated with the 'Little Ice Age'." Hence, this particular study suggests that the post-Little Ice Age warming the earth has experienced for the last century or two -- and which could well continue for some time to come -- should be leading this portion of the planet into a period of less extensive flooding as opposed to the more extensive flooding that is typically predicted by climate alarmists to occur most everywhere on earth in response to warming.

Pirazzoli (2000) analyzed tide-gauge and meteorological data over the period 1951-1997 for the northern portion of the Atlantic coast of France, discovering that the number of atmospheric depressions and strong surge winds in this region "are becoming less frequent." The data also revealed that "ongoing trends of climate variability show a decrease in the frequency and hence the gravity of coastal flooding," which is exactly what would be expected in view of the findings of Nesje et al.

Reynard et al. (2001) used a continuous flow simulation model to assess the impacts of potential climate and land use changes on flood regimes of the UK's Thames and Severn Rivers; and, as might have been expected of a model study, it predicted modest increases in the magnitudes of 50-year floods on these rivers when the climate was forced to change as predicted for various global warming scenarios. However, when the modelers allowed forest cover to rise concomitantly, they found that this land use change "acts in the opposite direction to the climate changes and under some scenarios is large enough to fully compensate for the shifts due to climate."

To better determine what might actually happen in the real world, therefore, it is important to consider how the forested areas of the rivers' catchments might change in the future; and two things come into play here. First, if forests are deemed to be important carbon sinks for which countries may get sequestration credits, and if nations begin to employ them as such, the UK government may well promote the development of new forests on much of the land in question. Second, as the air's CO2 content continues to rise, there will be a great natural impetus for forests to expand their ranges and grow in areas where grasses now dominate the landscape (see Range Expansion (Woody Plants) in our Subject Index). Consequently, with man and nature both singing the same tune, so to speak, it is only logical to presume that forests will indeed expand their presence on the river catchments in question and neutralize any predicted increases in flood activity in a future high-CO2 world.

Warming itself may also help in this regard, according to the findings of Starkel (2002), who reviewed what is known about the relationship between extreme weather events and the thermal climate of Europe during the Holocene. This review clearly demonstrated that more extreme fluvial activity was typically associated with cooler time intervals. In recovering from one such period (the Younger Dryas), for example, temperatures in Germany and Switzerland rose by 3-5°C over several decades; and "this fast shift," in Starkel's words, "caused a rapid expansion of forest communities, [a] rise in the upper treeline and higher density of vegetation cover," which led to a "drastic" reduction in sediment delivery from slopes to river channels.

As an example of just how far out of touch with reality the world's climate alarmists have historically been on this topic, we refer to John Hooper's 14 August 2002 article in The Guardian, where he notes that in the midst of 2002's massive flooding in Europe, Gallus Cadonau (the managing director of the Swiss Greina Foundation) called for a punitive tariff on U.S. imports to force cooperation on greenhouse gas emissions, claiming that the flooding "definitely has to do with global warming," while stating that "we must change something now," which claim of necessity for immediate action is generally repeated the wide world over ... year after year after year ... by the world's radical environmentalists.

Reinforcement of ardent claims is another characteristic of climate alarmism; and in this case, Cadonau obtained support from Germany's environment minister, Jurgen Trittin, who implied much the same thing when he said "if we don't want this development to get worse, then we must continue with the consistent reduction of environmentally harmful greenhouse gasses." A thorough analysis of historical flood accounts and river-flow data, however, suggest something very different, as demonstrated by the next research group.

Mudelsee et al. (2003) analyzed historical documents from the 11th century to 1850, plus subsequent water stage and daily runoff records from then until 2002, for two of the largest rivers in central Europe: the Elbe and Oder Rivers. In doing so, they discovered that for the prior 80 to 150 years, which climate alarmists typically describe as a period of unprecedented global warming, there was actually "a decrease in winter flood occurrence in both rivers, while summer floods show[ed] no trend, consistent with trends in extreme precipitation occurrence."

These findings clearly indicate that the strident claims of the world's Cadonaus and Trittins simply don't stand up to scrutiny when compared with reality, for as the world has recovered from the global chill of the Little Ice Age, flooding of the Elbe and Oder Rivers has not materially changed in summer and has actually decreased in winter. Thus, the blaming of anthropogenic CO2 emissions for the European flooding of 2002 must have been a political ploy, for it was surely not a reasoned deduction based on scientific evidence.

Another example of similar behavior from this time period occurred on the 8th and 9th of September 2002, when extreme flooding of the Gardon River in southern France -- which occurred as a result of half an average year's rainfall being received in approximately twenty hours -- claimed the lives of a number of people and caused much damage to towns and villages situated adjacent to its channel. The event elicited much coverage in the press; and, in the words of Sheffer et al. (2003a), "this flood is now considered by the media and professionals to be 'the largest flood on record'," which record extends all the way back to 1890.

Coincidently -- and fortunately! -- Sheffer et al. were in the midst of a study of prior floods of the Gardon River when the "big one" hit. Hence, they had data spanning a much longer time period against which to compare its magnitude. Based on their findings, they reported that "the extraordinary flood of September 2002 was not the largest by any means," noting that "similar, and even larger floods have occurred several times in the recent past," with three of the five greatest floods they had identified to that point in time occurring over the period AD 1400-1800 during the Little Ice Age.

Commenting on these facts, Sheffer et al. stated that "using a longer time scale than human collective memory, paleoflood studies can put in perspective the occurrences of the extreme floods that hit Europe and other parts of the world during the summer of 2002." And that perspective clearly shows that even greater floods occurred repeatedly during the Little Ice Age, which was the coldest period of the current interglacial.

Working in the Myjava Hill Land of Slovakia, which is situated in the western part of the country near its border with the Czech Republic, Stankoviansky (2003) employed topographical maps and aerial photographs, field geomorphic investigation, and the study of historical documents, including those from local municipal and church sources, to determine the spatial distribution of gully landforms and the temporal history of their creation. These diverse efforts led to his discovery that "the central part of the area, settled between the second half of the 16th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, was affected by gully formation in two periods, the first between the end of the 16th century and the 1730s and the second roughly between the 1780s and 1840s." Stankoviansky determined that these gullies were formed "during periods of extensive forest clearance and expansion of farmland," but he reports that "the triggering mechanism of gullying was extreme rainfalls during the Little Ice Age [italics added]." More specifically, he writes that "the gullies were formed relatively quickly by repeated incision of ephemeral flows concentrated during extreme rainfall events, which were clustered in periods that correspond with known climatic fluctuations during the Little Ice Age." Subsequently, from the mid-19th century to the present, he reports "there has been a decrease in gully growth because of the afforestation of gullies and especially climatic improvements since the termination of the Little Ice Age [bold and italics added]."

Continuing our lengthy story, Lindstrom and Bergstrom (2004) analyzed runoff and flood data from more than 60 discharge stations scattered throughout Sweden, some of which provided information stretching as far back in time as the early to mid 1800s, when Sweden and the world were still experiencing the cold of the Little Ice Age. This analysis led them to discover that the last 20 years of the past century were indeed unusually wet, with a runoff anomaly of +8% compared with the century average. But they also found that "the runoff in the 1920s was comparable to that of the two latest decades," and that "the few observation series available from the 1800s show that the runoff was even higher than recently." In addition, they determined that "flood peaks in old data [were] probably underestimated," which "makes it difficult to conclude that there has really been a significant increase in average flood levels," as is often claimed by climate alarmists and reported in the media. Also, they say that "no increased frequency of floods with a return period of 10 years or more, could be determined."

With respect to the generality of their findings, Lindstrom and Bergstrom concluded that conditions in Sweden "are consistent with results reported from nearby countries: e.g. Forland et al. (2000), Bering Ovesen et al. (2000), Klavins et al. (2002) and Hyvarinen (2003)," and that, "in general, it has been difficult to show any convincing evidence of an increasing magnitude of floods (e.g. Roald, 1999) in the near region, as is the case in other parts of the world (e.g. Robson et al., 1998; Lins and Slack, 1999; Douglas et al., 2000; McCabe and Wolock, 2002; Zhang et al., 2001)."

Shortly thereafter, Mudelsee et al. (2004) wrote that "extreme river floods have had devastating effects in central Europe in recent years," citing as examples the Elbe flood of August 2002, which caused 36 deaths and inflicted damages totaling over 15 billion U.S. dollars, and the Oder flood of July 1997, which caused 114 deaths and inflicted approximately 5 billion dollars in damages. And they noted that concern had been expressed in this regard "in the Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," wherein it was stated that "current anthropogenic changes in atmospheric composition will add to this risk."

Unconvinced about this contention, the four researchers reevaluated the quality of data and methods of reconstruction that had previously produced flood histories of the middle parts of the Elbe and Oder rivers back to AD 1021 and 1269, respectively; and in doing so, they found, for both the Elbe and Oder rivers, "no significant trends in summer flood risk in the twentieth century," but "significant downward [italics added] trends in winter flood risk," which latter phenomenon -- described by them as "a reduced winter flood risk during the instrumental period" -- they specifically described as "a response to regional warming." Hence, their study provided no support whatsoever for the IPCC "concern" that CO2-induced warming would add to the risk of river flooding in Europe. If anything, their findings suggested just the opposite.

In another major step forward, Macklin et al. (2005) developed what they described as "the first probability-based, long-term record of flooding in Europe, which spans the entire Holocene and uses a large and unique database of ¹⁴C-dated British flood deposits," after which they compared their reconstructed flood history "with high-resolution proxy-climate records from the North Atlantic region, northwest Europe and the British Isles to critically test the link between climate change and flooding." As a result of this multifaceted endeavor, they determined that "the majority of the largest and most widespread recorded floods in Great Britain [had] occurred during cool, moist periods," and that "comparison of the British Holocene palaeoflood series ... with climate reconstructions from tree-ring patterns of subfossil bog oaks in northwest Europe also suggests that a similar relationship between climate and flooding in Great Britain existed during the Holocene, with floods being more frequent and larger during relatively cold, wet periods." In addition, they say that "an association between flooding episodes in Great Britain and periods of high or increasing cosmogenic ¹⁴C production suggests that centennial-scale solar activity may be a key control of non-random changes in the magnitude and recurrence frequencies of floods."

"Starting from historical document sources, early instrumental data (basically, rainfall and surface pressure) and the most recent meteorological information," as they describe it, Llasat et al. (2005) analyzed "the temporal evolution of floods in NE Spain since the 14th century," focusing particularly on the river Segre in Lleida, the river Llobregat in El Prat, and the river Ter in Girona. This work indicated there was "an increase of flood events for the periods 1580-1620, 1760-1800 and 1830-1870," and they report that "these periods are coherent with chronologies of maximum advance in several alpine glaciers." In addition, we calculate from their tabulated data that for the aggregate of the three river basins noted above, the mean number of what Llasat et al. call catastrophic floods per century for the 14th through 19th centuries was 3.55 ± 0.22, while the corresponding number for the 20th century was only 1.33 ± 0.33.

The four Spanish researchers thus concluded their paper by saying "we may assert that, having analyzed responses inherent to the Little Ice Age and due to the low occurrence of frequent flood events or events of exceptional magnitude in the 20th century, the latter did not present an excessively problematic scenario." However, having introduced their paper with descriptions of the devastating effects of the September 1962 flash flood in Catalonia (over 800 deaths), the August 1996 flash flood in the Spanish Pyrenees (87 deaths), as well as the floods of September 1992 that produced much loss of life and material damage in France and Italy, they hastened to add that the more recent "damage suffered and a perception [italics added] of increasing vulnerability is something very much alive in public opinion and in economic balance sheets." Hence, it is relatively easy for climate alarmists to claim that flooding in the region has been exacerbated by global warming, when in reality just the opposite would appear to be the case.

Cyberski et al. (2006) used documentary sources of information (written documents and "flood boards") to develop a reconstruction of winter flooding of the Vistula River in Poland all the way back to AD 988. This work indicated, in their words, that winter floods "have exhibited a decreasing frequency of snowmelt and ice-jam floods in the warming climate over much of the Vistula basin." In addition, they report that the work of Pfister (2005) indicates that most of Central Europe has also become less drought-prone in winter during the 20th century. Consequently, it would appear that 20th-century global warming has been accompanied by reductions in both floods and droughts in much of Central Europe, which is just the opposite of what the world's climate alarmists say should be the case on both counts.

Focusing on southwest Germany, Burger et al. (2007) reviewed what was known at the time about flooding in this region over the past three centuries, which takes us back well into the Little Ice Age. The six scientists report that the extreme flood of the Neckar River (southwest Germany) in October 1824 was "the largest flood during the last 300 years in most parts of the Neckar catchment." In fact, they say "it was the highest flood ever recorded [italics added] in most parts of the Neckar catchment and also affected the Upper Rhine, the Mosel and Saar." In addition, they report that the historical floods of 1845 and 1882 "were among the most extreme floods in the Rhine catchment in the 19th century," which they describe as truly "catastrophic events." And speaking of the flood of 1845, they say it "showed a particular impact in the Middle and Lower Rhine and in this region it was higher than the flood of 1824 [italics added]." Finally, the year 1882 actually saw two extreme floods, one at the end of November and one at the end of December. Of the first one, Burger et al. say that "in Koblenz, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine, the flood of November 1882 was the fourth-highest of the recorded floods, after 1784, 1651 and 1920," with the much-hyped late-20th-century floods of 1993, 1995, 1998 and 2002 not even meriting a mention. Consequently, the real-world data from southwest Germany argue strongly against the climate-alarmist contention that global warming -- due to whatever reason -- leads to the occurrence of more severe flooding.

In introducing their study of the subject, Sheffer et al. (2008) wrote that "during the past few years, Europe has experienced extraordinary flooding," and they say that "in southern France, the Gardon River experienced an extreme flood during the 8th-9th of September 2002," which was "larger than any known historical flood on record in this catchment." Their work, however, was soon to prove that "fact" to be obsolete.

Working in two caves and two alcoves of a 1600-meter-long stretch of the Gardon River, where it flows through a gorge with steep banks of flood terraces and exposed rocky cliffs, Sheffer et al. analyzed geomorphic, sedimentologic and hydrologic data associated with both historical and late Holocene floods, which they had hoped would provide a longer and better-defined perspective on the subject. And so it did, as they discovered that "at least five floods of a larger magnitude than the 2002 flood occurred over the last 500 years," all of which took place, as they describe it, "during the Little Ice Age." In addition, they note that "the Little Ice Age has been related to increased flood frequency in France (Guilbert, 1994; Coeur, 2003; Sheffer, 2003; Sheffer et al., 2003a,b; Sheffer, 2005), and in Spain (Benito et al., 1996; Barriendos and Martin Vide, 1998; Benito et al., 2003; Thorndycraft and Benito, 2006a,b)."

Also working in France were Renard et al. (2008), who employed four different procedures for assessing field significance and regional consistency with respect to trend detection in both high-flow and low-flow hydrological regimes of French rivers, using daily discharge data obtained from 195 gauging stations having a minimum record length of 40 years. In doing so, they determined that "at the scale of the entire country, the search for a generalized change in extreme hydrological events through field significance assessment remained largely inconclusive." In addition, they discovered that at the smaller scale of hydro-climatic regions, there were also no significant results for most such areas.

Noting that "recent flood events have led to speculation that climate change is influencing the high-flow regimes of UK catchments," and that "projections suggest that flooding may increase in [the] future as a result of human-induced warming." Hannaford and Marsh (2008) used the UK "benchmark network" of 87 "near-natural catchments" identified by Bradford and Marsh (2003) to conduct "a UK-wide appraisal of trends in high-flow regimes unaffected by human disturbances." This work revealed, in their words, that "significant positive trends were observed in all high-flow indicators ... over the 30-40 years prior to 2003, primarily in the maritime-influenced, upland catchments in the north and west of the UK." However, they say "there is little compelling evidence for high-flow trends in lowland areas in the south and east." They also found that "in western areas, high-flow indicators are correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation Index (NAOI)," so that "recent trends may therefore reflect an influence of multi-decadal variability related to the NAOI." In addition, they state that longer river flow records from five additional catchments they studied "provide little compelling evidence for long-term (>50 year) trends but show evidence of pronounced multi-decadal fluctuations." Lastly, they add that "in comparison with other indicators, there were fewer trends in flood magnitude," and that "trends in peaks-over-threshold frequency and extended-duration maxima at a gauging station were not necessarily associated with increasing annual maximum instantaneous flow." All things considered, therefore, Hannaford and Marsh concluded that "considerable caution should be exercised in extrapolating from any future increases in runoff or high-flow frequency to an increasing vulnerability to extreme flood events," which word to the wise is something the world's policy makers would do well to carefully consider, especially those residing within the UK.

Diodato et al. (2008) undertook a detailed analysis of "the Calore River Basin (South Italy) erosive rainfall using data from 425-year-long series of both observations (1922-2004) and proxy-based reconstructions (1580-1921)." This work revealed pronounced inter-decadal variations, "with multi-decadal erosivity reflecting the mixed population of thermo-convective and cyclonic rainstorms with large anomalies," and they note that "the so-called Little Ice Age (16th to mid-19th centuries) was identified as the stormiest period, with mixed rainstorm types and high frequency of floods and erosive rainfall."

In concluding their paper, the three researchers write that "in recent years, climate change (generally assumed as synonymous with global warming) has become a global concern and is widely reported in the media." And with respect to the concern that both droughts and floods will become both more frequent and more severe as the planet warms, they say their study indicates that "climate in the Calore River Basin has been largely characterized by naturally occurring weather anomalies in past centuries (long before industrial CO2 emissions), not only in recent years," and that there has been a "relevant smoothing" of such events during the modern era.

Most recently, based on information on flood losses obtained from the Emergency Events Database and the Natural Hazards Assessment Network, Barredo (2009) developed a 1970-2006 history of normalized monetary flood losses in Europe -- including the member states of the European Union along with Norway, Switzerland, Croatia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia -- by calculating the value of losses that would have occurred if the floods of the past had taken place under the current socio-economic conditions of the continent, while further removing inter-country price differences by adjusting the losses for purchasing power parities. This work revealed, in the analyst's words, that "there is no evidence of a clear positive trend in normalized flood losses in Europe," and that "changes in population, inflation and per capita real wealth are the main factors contributing to the increase of the original raw losses." Consequently, after removing the influence of the stated socio-economic factors, the European Commission researcher says "there remains no evident signal suggesting any influence of anthropogenic climate change on the trend of flood losses in Europe during the assessed period."

In summary, and in spite of vociferous climate-alarmist claims to the contrary, there do not appear to have been any increases in either floods or properly-adjusted flood damages throughout all of Europe over the period of time that the world's radical environmentalists contend was the warmest of the past thousand or more years, making their catastrophic contentions simply ring ever more hollow with each passing year. In fact, the lack of such evidence should actually qualify as proof of the falsity of their contentions.

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