'All in this war together': Climate scientists attribute climate change to record-breaking floods

The National Weather Service has issued more flood warnings in 2025 than any other year on record, dating back to 1986.

The last two weeks have seen intense flooding across the country, including the flood in Kerr County, Texas, that killed more than 120 people, including 27 children attending summer camp. North Carolina, New Mexico, New York and New Jersey have also been impacted over this short span of time. 

Chantal, which hit North Carolina as a tropical depression on July 6 and 7, dumped nine to 12 inches of rain and prompted flooding in low-lying areas near rivers and creeks. Six people in central North Carolina died because of these floods. Gov. Josh Stein declared a State of Emergency for 13 counties grappling with the remnants of Tropical Storm Chantal.

Climate attribution scientists from research organizations ClimaMeter and Climate Central held a press briefing Tuesday to highlight and explain how climate change contributed to making these events more intense. 

The short answer: Warmer oceans and a warmer atmosphere hold and release more rain.

Shel Winkley of Climate Central collaborates with meteorologists, journalists, scientists and other voices to help them identify when a fingerprint of climate change has influenced current and past weather events.

Winkley said that although this year has seen the most flash flood warnings on record, that is partly due to a better understanding of water levels in recent years. A warmer atmosphere is a greedier one, he stated, as the atmosphere for every one degree Fahrenheit holds 4% more moisture. 

That’s why heavier rain has been more prevalent, as the atmosphere is holding more moisture and thus holding and releasing more rain.

“What we can do with attribution science is to understand how much above average is the sea surface temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, which was 3 degrees above average for what is typical for late March,” said Winkley. “Warmer oceans mean more evaporation, which means more moisture to be fed into the systems for them to tap into and we’re able to make a climate connection to that event.”

North Carolina has seen about a 35% increase in heaviest rainfall days in 63 years. Winkley warns that if we get to a world where global warming increases 2 degrees Celsius higher than average, our state could see 20% to 30% heavier rain. 

As of Tuesday’s meeting, this month is the third highest on record for ocean heat in July behind 2023 and 2024. 

The Gulf of Mexico is above average and the Atlantic is 200 to 700 times more likely to be warmer because of climate change. Above-average water temperatures not only produce more flooding, but also can potentially boost hurricane intensity, higher humidity and above-average nighttime temperatures.

More moisture creates warmer nights. In the south and southeast regions specifically, summer nights are warming almost twice as fast as daytime temperatures. On average, cities experience about 27 warmer-than-normal summer nights with strong climate change fingerprints each year, compared to one such day annually during the 1970s.

Davide Faranda of ClimaMeter and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) is an expert on extreme weather events, focusing on the attribution of extreme events to climate change and understanding how much greenhouse gases influence the occurrence of extremes. 

Mireia Ginesta of ClimaMeter and Oxford University focuses on quantifying the damages caused by extreme storms and attributing these impacts to anthropogenic climate change.

Both Ginesta and Faranda link the burning of fossil fuels to global warming, connecting recent storms to human-caused climate change. They said 70% of global warming comes from carbon dioxide, which is released from burning fossil fuels. 

And through their international research, along with the research from America-based institutions and people like Winkley, they found that most people are more aware of climate change now. 

According to Faranda, 80% of people in European countries are aware of climate change, while 50% are aware of how climate change can impact them directly.

However, in the U.S., Winkley specifically looked at polls in Kerr County where the floods happened and found that 55% of those asked believed climate change could hurt people within the U.S., but only 39% said that climate change would impact them directly.  

LaKresha Bates joined the panel as a member of the Extreme Weather Survivors (EWS), a nationwide community who provide support to those impacted by extreme weather

She said that these small numbers of those who believe climate change could impact them should be higher, as climate change has reached a point that it has become everyone’s problem, no matter their background. 

“Stop playing politics with lives. Provide funding and the right people in the right places to come up with a plan,” Bates said. “We are vulnerable at this point to these disasters and we don’t know when these disasters will come to one of our doors.”

Faranda begins to close out the panel by saying that climate change is a global concern. 

“Addressing climate change is a matter of safety, health, and now economic and financial opportunities and we need to learn how to stay safe all together without political boundaries, and boundaries between countries,” Faranda remarked. “We are all in this war together.”

All data provided in the meeting is public and can be accessed at climatecentral.org and  climameter.org.