Climate change amplified Storm Boris floods more than its rainfall, models find

Flood peaks in central Europe from the calamitous 2024 Storm Boris would have been 14 to 22% lower without the influence of human-driven climate change, new models suggest. Precipitation, meanwhile, would have been 6 to 9% lower, according to the analysis published in Science Advances.

“Anthropogenic climate change substantially amplified the flooding associated with Storm Boris beyond what would be expected when studying precipitation intensification alone,” Peter Miersch and colleagues write.

Research shows that human-driven climate change has directly intensified extreme precipitation events. As such, it is likely that climate change has also contributed to intensifying floods, but the authors note that more studies must be done to define these relationships further.

Miersch and colleagues used 2024’s Storm Boris as a case study to examine the influence of anthropogenic climate change on precipitation and flooding in central Europe. The team drew on hydrological models, climate models and a storyline framework, an approach that reconstructs a narrative through data, to compare the event as it occurred with a counterfactual world without human-caused warming.

Using this combination of methods, they determined that precipitation from Storm Boris would have been 6 to 9% lower if there was no anthropogenic forcing. Meanwhile, flood peak magnitude would have been 14 to 22% lower.

Moreover, because of human-driven climate change, flood peaks increased by more than double the increase for event precipitation. This gap between the rainfall response and the flood response is the study’s central finding: the flooding associated with Storm Boris was amplified beyond what would be expected from precipitation intensification alone.

The study, published in Science Advances under the title “Evidence from 2024 Storm Boris indicates anthropogenic climate change amplifies floods more than extreme precipitation,” appeared on 28 October 2026. Its DOI is 10.1126/sciadv.aef7703.

The authors caution that further research is needed to define these relationships more precisely, and the results are specific to the Storm Boris case examined with the models and storyline framework used in the study.

Subject of Research: The influence of anthropogenic climate change on precipitation and flooding from Storm Boris in central Europe

Article Title: Without climate change, flood peaks in Europe from Storm Boris would have been as much as 22% lower, models suggest

Article References: Without climate change, flood peaks in Europe from Storm Boris would have been as much as 22% lower, models suggest. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

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Keywords: Storm Boris, flooding, climate change, extreme precipitation, central Europe, hydrological modelling, storyline approach, flood peaks, Science Advances, attribution, Without, climate