Better buy your flood insurance: Climate change makes August flood more likely

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BATON ROUGE - Significant rainfall in August that lead to wide-spread and catastrophic flooding may have been exacerbated by climate change, a team of researchers said in research published quietly on the internet Wednesday.

Extreme rainfall along the Central, U.S. Gulf Coast has become more likely and more intense in the last 116 years as a result of "long-term warming of the planet resulting from human activities such as burning fossil fuels," the report suggested. The research team said it believes climate change increased the intensity of rain between August 12 - 14. During the middle weekend of August, parts of the region sustained more than 30 inches of rain causing flooding that destroyed many homes and businesses in East Baton Rouge, Livingston and Ascension. Thirteen people died as a result of the flooding.

Climate change may also increase the frequency of such an event, scientists said. By comparing the flood to historical records and climate change models, researchers wrote a similar flood is at least 40-percent more likely to occur this century than last.

"By the end of the current century, if greenhouse gases continue to increase as projected, their impact will further increase the probability of an event like the one observed August 12th-14th," scientists wrote.

The research team was made up of Climate Central, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), Princeton University and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) as part of the World Weather Attribution (WWA). The Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, the University of Oxford and University of Melbourne conducted independent assessments using multiple peer-reviewed approaches for the study.

WBRZ is working to get comments from Louisiana climate experts. Check back for updates throughout the day.

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