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Floods in more than 80 countries have killed almost 3,000 people and caused hardship for more than 17 million worldwide since the beginning of 2002, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Thursday.
The WMO said in a report that property damage is amounting to over 13 billion US dollars with over 8 million square kilometers of the total area affected by the floods, almost the size of the United States.
The specialized agency of the United Nations said since the middle of June, much of Europe received between 200 and 500 mm of rain, while recently between 100 and 400 mm fell over much of Europe from England southeastward to the Black Sea.
The result was record floods on a number of rivers, most notably the tributaries and then the main stream of the Elbe and the Danube, it said, adding that the Danube exceeded the previous highest recorded level by three cm in Budapest, by 22 cm in Komaron and by 30 cm in Estztergom.
The Vltava and the Elbe both flooded to levels estimated to be such as could be expected only 250 to 500 years, the agency said.
In China as in Europe, the months of June and July were very wet and in fact some rivers including Yangtze flood large tracts of land in the southern part of China, the WMO said.
"The flooding of Lake Dongting was caused by extremely heavy rain falling on already saturated land," it said.
But the WMO did not confirm that whether or not the causes of the floods are associated with climate change, predicting that the increased flooding will occur in the future.
During the floods in central Europe and China, the droughts are also rampant around the world at the same time as serious droughts are occurring in the southern and central Africa, the WMO said.
The WMO called for strengthening management of floods and droughts through upgrading forecasting systems and improving services.
(Xinhua News Agency August 30, 2002)
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