The Elbe river in Dresden, Germany, pictured on 16 September at 19 feet above its normal level after four days of the heaviest rain ever recorded in central Europe that a report out Wednesday says was made much more likely by human-induced climate change. File photo by Filip Singer/EPA-EFE Sept. 25 (UPI) — Extreme rainfall that triggered deadly floods in Europe killing at least 24 people earlier this month was made both more likely and worse by orders of magnitude by man-made climate change, a new study published Wednesday said. The heaviest rain over a four-day period Sept. 12 through Sept. 15 in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Austria and the Czech Republic was made at least twice as likely and 7% more intense due to human-induced climate change, according to research by academics for World Weather Attribution. “In today’s climate, which is 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than at the beginning of the industrial period, a rainfall event of this magnitude is a very rare event expected to occur about once every 100 to 300 years,” the group said in a news release . “As the event is by far the heaviest ever recorded, the exact return time is difficult to estimate based on only about 100 years of observed data.” However, using observational data to isolate trends the researchers found heavy four-day rainfall events had become about twice as likely and 20% more intense since the pre-industrial era. They calculated the changes in frequency and intensity specifically linked to man-made climate change by using models simulating heavy rain in the affected areas combined with their observation-based evaluations. “All models showed an increase in intensity and likelihood as well, as expected from physical processes in a warming climate. The combined change, attributable to human-induced climate change, is roughly a doubling in […]