While flooding is common in November, which has always been the wettest month of the year, the intensity of the floods seen in west Attica and before that on the island of Symi could be due to climate change, the head of Greece’s meteorological service (EMY) Antonis Lalos said on Wednesday.
“The link arises based on the following reasoning; in October there was no rain at all and this is an extreme phenomenon. Also an extreme event is uninterrupted rain for a week. One could therefore consider that these characteristics are linked with the greenhouse phenomenon,” he pointed out.
Talking to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA) about the latest downpours, Lalos also warned that similar phenomena might affect other areas in Greece during the week, at least until Saturday.
He also noted, nevertheless, that such flooding was hardly unprecedented and that one of the greatest natural disasters to ever strike Athens had occurred during this month in 1961, when a violent and extended storm had claimed 43 lives and inflicted untold damage.
He stressed that this weather pattern was caused by a combination of aerial masses coming down from Central Europe or the Mediterranean that became “loaded” with water vapour due to the still high temperatures of the seas.
“The quantities of water that these systems bring to our region is very great. We therefore know that a storm will break out at some point and, for obvious reasons, coastal regions will receive the most rainfall,” he added.
Current forecasts indicated that the weather in Greece will start to improve on Saturday night toward Sunday morning, when any rain will be confined to eastern parts of the country.
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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Spyros Gouvas License: CC-BY-SA
Source: ANA-MPA
