A thick layer of mud covers the streets of Alfafar in Valencia, Spain, after floods in November 2024 Extreme flooding is not solely caused by climate change, a study has found. Floods over the past 8,000 years have exceeded the extremes seen in recent decades , researchers at the University of Exeter discovered. Recent floods , such as those in Valencia, Spain and across the UK last winter , have been linked to climate change and accompanied by warnings of being “unprecedented”. However, Prof Stephan Harrison, from the university’s College of Life and Environmental Sciences, said the new study found that many previous floods had exceeded the recent extremes. By dating individual sand grains in floodplain sediments and analysing their size, the researchers were able to assess the frequency and scale of floods going back several thousand years. “In recent years, floods around the world. including in Pakistan, Spain and Germany , have killed thousands of people and caused enormous damage,” said Prof Harrison. “Such floods are seen as ‘unprecedented’ – but if you look back over the last few thousand years, that’s not the case. In fact, floods we call unprecedented may be nowhere near the most extreme that have happened in the past.” Cars and debris block a tunnel in Valencia after flash floods in November 2024 The study examined palaeoflood records for the Lower Rhine in Germany and the Netherlands, the Upper Severn in the UK and rivers around Valencia. In the Rhine, records over the past 8,000 years show at least 12 floods that are likely to have exceeded modern peaks. The Severn analysis shows that floods in the last 72 years of monitoring are not exceptional compared to what can be seen in records going back 4,000 years. The largest flood in the Upper […]