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What caused the continuous rainstorm in Britain?
Recently, continuous heavy rains in England have caused floods in many villages and towns. However, this rare rainstorm is not as simple as a "natural disaster". Scientific research published on 25th shows that the rainstorm and flood in Britain are caused by climate change. This is the first time to confirm people's long-standing speculation that man-made global warming is the chief culprit leading to severe storms in the northern hemisphere. In the past few days, several hours of rainfall in some parts of England exceeded the rainfall in the previous month, and floods forced thousands of people to become homeless. Barbara Young, an official of the British Environment Agency, said: "This is a once-in-a-century rainfall, which is very violent." About150 thousand residents in Gloucestershire lack drinking water, and another 20 thousand people are in danger of losing their daily supply because the local waterworks are damaged by floods. The increase in rainfall has "man-made traces". In fact, a month ago, Britain was hit by a flood. On June 24th, a downpour caused a similar disaster in a small town in northern England. However, the floods in July were more serious than those in June. This has aroused scientists' questions: Are these two heavy rains related to climate change? Therefore, some national climate research institutions, such as the Hadley Center of the British Meteorological Office, use computer climate models for research. By analyzing several places where rainfall has increased in recent decades, including mid-latitude areas in the northern hemisphere, they first linked this to global warming caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. A scientist familiar with the results of this study said: "The results of this study show for the first time that there are' artificial traces' in the increase of rainfall in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and there are climate change factors caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Previously, we have found' man-made traces' in the phenomenon of rising temperature, but it is the first time to link it with rainfall. Therefore, this discovery is of great significance. " Due to continuous rainfall, not only European countries such as Britain, Switzerland and Germany have also suffered serious floods. Experts say that climate change may bring more disasters to Europe and the world. A warm atmosphere contains more water vapor. Wolfgang Grabas of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization said that a warmer atmosphere contains more water vapor, which can release more energy when the weather gets worse, thus making storms more violent and precipitation more. This can explain the increase of floods in Europe in recent years. Perkins Mellehorn, a flood expert in Zurich, Switzerland, said that other countries in the world are also facing more and more such disasters. In fact, as early as 1997, the British Climate Impact Planning Working Group was established in Britain. In the report "The Impact of Global Warming on Britain in 2 1 Century", this group of scientists pointed out that Britain will face stronger and more frequent rainfall. Although previous predictions suggested that summer should be hotter and drier, an expert from the Hadley Climate Prediction and Research Center of the British Meteorological Office pointed out that climate change will also lead to an increase in extreme rainfall in dry weather. In 2004, Britain's chief science and technology consultant, who is committed to the study of global climate change, led a research team to publish a research report "Future Floods", which clearly pointed out that if preventive measures are not taken, climate change will bring more and more serious floods, threatening more people and more property. However, this report did not attract public attention. According to the Morning Post.