Rivers that overflow their banks cause enormous damage: Worldwide, annual river flood damage is estimated at over $100 billion - and it continues to rise. But floods have always existed. Until now it was unclear how unusual the flood catastrophes of the past years are compared to the last centuries.

The Austrian flood specialist Prof. Günter Blöschl from the Vienna University of Technology led a large international study in which a total of 34 research groups were involved.  It became clear that the most recent decades are among the periods with the highest flood levels in Europe in the last 500 years, and that the floods today behave fundamentally different than in the past. Even in comparison to flood-rich periods in the past, the floods are now greater in many places, the flood seasons have shifted and the relationship between floods and air temperature has been reversed: in the past, floods occurred in cold phases - today it is precisely global warming that causes floods. The results have now been published in the scientific journal "Nature".