Double trouble: How Belgium’s gearing up for flooding and drought

Belgium faces a future of warmer temperatures and more extreme events, according to climate projections. No stranger to flooding, it’s also grappling with an increased risk of drought. Climate Now reports from a region of Belgium that’s already felt some of the impacts.

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[OldScientist]

For studies of drought patterns in Europe:
Vincente-Serrano et al. 2020 “Our study stresses that from the long-term (1851–2018) perspective there are no generally consistent trends in droughts across Western Europe.”
Oikonomou et al. 2020 “One of the central outcomes of this research is that there is little change in drought characteristics for 1969–2018. It also seems, no particular tendencies for more or less frequent droughts in the two major geographical domains of Europe are present.”
IPCC AR6: “in areas of Western and Central Europe and Northern Europe, there is no evidence of changes in the severity of hydrological droughts since 1950” so all the way from the western tip of France to Moscow.

[krobbins]

Its great to do projects around the sites that flood but upstream and downstream projects are prolly even more important.

[SamWilkinsonn]

Since when have we used the 1991-2020 average? Say it like it is, 1.64C above pre-Industrial Revolution for the rolling 12 month average. Nobody wants to admit we've crossed the 1.5C Paris agreement, that's why.

We're cooked.

[OldScientist]

As regards flooding, the U.N. IPCC admits having “low confidence” in even the “sign” of any changes—in other words, it is just as likely that climate change is making floods less frequent and less severe. In a study on the climate impact on flooding for the USA and Europe, published in the Journal of Hydrology, Volume 552, September 2017, Pages 704-717, the study found:
‘The number of significant trends was about the number expected due to chance alone.’
‘Changes in the frequency of major floods are dominated by multidecadal variability.’
‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded (Hartmann et al., 2013) that globally there is no clear and widespread evidence of changes in flood magnitude or frequency in observed flood records.’
‘The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.’

[sheilah_]

While cities have to be adapated to floodings and droughts, it is more urgent that we change our patterns of overproduction, overconsumption and waste. Can people stop buying and throwing shitty stuff that shortly fulfill their emptiness?

[cozmicmike]

Recalling my time as a self identified Green, it was a pleasant identity to have. Other Greens were generally pleasant, nice people, and inoffensive.
We had this common belief that we really cared, felt a responsibility and were prepared to make sacrifices for a greater good. But therein lay the danger.
We didn't regard ourselves as sanctimonious, but behind the facade of our niceness lurked a sanctimonious hubris, in that we regarded people other than ourselves as ignorant and in need of saving.
It began with a love of nature, not a bad thing to have, a dislike of pollution, desolation, and contamination. But contaminated we were, we took the CO2 global warming, climate crisis narrative, hook, line and sinker, with little question, or examination ! Yes the people selling the idea buried us in data, but we didn't choose to examine, or challenge them, we were the chosen, who were out to save the planet.
How many have rewatched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth ? The first time I watched it I took it as truth, it spurred me on, confirming my belief and reinforcing my self image. Well it didn't stand the test of time, much like Greta's tweets, it's an embarrassment, the crisis failed to emerge.
CVD ! Thank you CVD for opening my eyes. You revealed yourself for what you are, ambitious totalitarian, authoritarian, Malthusians, who hate humanity ! There they all were, the philanthro capitalists who sold me “ Oil will make us boil “ pushing by every means bar physically holding me down, to put an experimental gene therapy into my body, into all our bodies ! You let the mask drop, and as a consequence, I rigorously examined everything you had ever told me and found it wanting !
There is always more than one way to approach a problem, so why not employ all of them ? The problem in your eyes is us, the useless eaters, so how do you reduce our numbers ? Well if you can get them to hate themselves, which a generation or more clearly does ! Get them to identify as a blight on the planet ? And then they might just volunteer, go quietly ? Slowly poisoned by novel “foods”, novel pharmaceuticals, particles sprayed into the air, starving as the politicians who claim to represent them attack the food supply, through austerity because the oil that fuels our prosperity is reduced and removed, or better still casualties to avoidable wars.
Well you misunderstood this former Green ! Yes I love nature, and I love the planet, but I love humanity too. And as for you Malthusians ? You are the problem seeking a solution, and people are starting to realise, so you’d better finish building your bunkers soon !

[BrentRyley]

Multidecadal variability?wow that sounds scientific!
Hang your hat on that one.

[johnberry]

Hundreds of years of human abuse is trouble for many years into the future. We have no real impact. The 'north' has got us here and now wants the entire globe to get us out. Jeez! Stay safe.

[OldScientist]

There's no global climate crisis.
The UN's IPCC AR6 WG1, chapter 12 "Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment", page 1856, section 12.5.2, table 12.12 confirms evidence is lacking or the signal is not present, leading to overall low confidence of an emerging signal both for the recent past or by 2050 even under the most extreme climate modelling (RCP 8.5):
Air Pollution Weather (temperature inversions),
Aridity,
Avalanche (snow),
Average Wind Speed,
Coastal Flood,
Agricultural drought,
Hydrological drought,
Erosion of Coastlines,
Fire Weather (hot and windy),
Flooding From Heavy Rain (pluvial floods),
Frost,
Hail,
Heavy Rain,
Heavy Snowfall and Ice Storms,
Landslides,
Marine Heatwaves,
Radiation at the Earth’s Surface,
River/Lake Floods,
Sand and Dust Storms,
Severe Wind Storms,
Glacier, and Ice Sheets,
Tropical Cyclones.

[agritech]

I'm just thinking, as well as these great ideas, in Ireland we could change planning laws so that roofs of houses and roads should be reflective, plastic for silage bales should probably be white instead of black, maybe even cars should have lighter more reflective paint