What does climate change/global warming theory predict about river flooding?

One thing it predicts (in general) is weather instability. Some places will be drier, and some will be wetter. The patterns we have come to rely on will change.

However, I don’t know if it’s possible to extrapolate the effects down to specific incidences like this. It’s like the people who look at winter storms and say that global warming is invalid because winter exists. In this case, I’ve heard it’s a bunch of ice that’s damming things up that’s the problem, but not the absolute cause. In 1997, it was an abnormal thaw that did it. Proximal causes vary, so it’s hard to pin something like that on Global Warming/Climate Change, but the idea that we’d have instability and more abnormal events seems to be holding, um, water.

@laureth – That abnormal thaw report was an interesting read.

I found it rather dry myself. ba-dum-dum

@laureth And yet rapid, unexpected melting is very wet. ;)

Predicting extreme weather is extremely complex.

They have been bagging against the Red River for generations. That is nothing new.

That it could lead to more floods.

As far as I understand it, the idea is that climate change/global warming will lead to more incidents of extreme weather in many regions of the world. One of the ways this will display itself is a greater number of river flooding/burst river banks in these areas it could also lead to more intense and/or more frequent heatwaves and drought in some areas.

In the UK, for example, it is predicted that while there will not necessarily be more rain, it will be more concentrated and we will have more occasions of very high levels of rain fall in just a few days, so there will be many more incidents of floods.