The heavy rainfall that hit southern Spain in recent days was about 12% heavier and twice as likely compared to the 1.3°C cooler pre industrial climate, a rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution climate scientists has found.
They highlighted that at 1.3 degrees of warming the atmosphere holds 9% more moisture and that historical weather observations indicate that one-day bursts of rain in this region of Spain are increasing as fossil fuel emissions heat the climate.
Climate change also made the warm Atlantic Ocean temperatures that added moisture to the storm 50 to 300 times more likely, according to a separate analysis by Climate Central.
It comes as Spain mourned at least 158 deaths and authorities told people in flood-stricken regions to stay at home as rescuers raced to find survivors in the rare disaster.
An exceptionally powerful Mediterranean storm from Tuesday unleashed heavy rains and torrents of mud-filled water that swept away people and wrecked homes, with the eastern Valencia region hit hardest.
The body coordinating rescue work in the Valencia region announced that 155 bodies had been recovered there.
Ben Clarke, Researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, said we are loading the dice of extreme weather in the worst way possible.
"As we speak, Typhoon Kong Rey is wreaking havoc in Taiwan, just 24 hours after the Spanish floods. These back-to-back events show how dangerous climate change already is with just 1.3°C of warming", he said.
The very rapid analysis from World Weather Attribution is not a full and detailed attribution study, as the scientists did not use climate models to simulate the event in a world without human-induced warming.
Read more: Death toll from floods in eastern Spain rises to 158
However, they say climate change is the most likely explanation, and the increased rainfall is well aligned with previous attribution studies on heavy rainfall in Europe, such as Storm Daniel and Storm Borris.
The group also warns that similar episodes of extreme rainfall will likely become heavier and more frequent as the climate warms.
Last week, the UN warned that the world is on track to experience 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of this century.
Friederike Otto, Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, said we need to adapt to climate change.
"The number of people who died in floods in Spain really underscores the critical need to prepare for extreme weather that is worse than anything experienced in the past", he said.
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