After the floods that occurred between May 31 and June 6, 2024 in Southern Germany, independent Zurich-based organisation PERILS has disclosed its initial industry loss estimate of €1,568 million.
The loss number covers the property line of business, with the majority of the industry losses occurring in the states of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg.
An updated estimate of the market loss from the floods will be available on September 6, 2024, three months after the event’s end day.
The floods were a result of “Orinoco”, an Atlantic low that diverged from its usual west-east path to move in a south-easterly direction towards the northern Mediterranean, before tracking north-eastwards towards central Europe. Orinoco continued to track northwards over the Alpine Mountain range, before getting blocked over Southern Germany by a stationary high-pressure system over Scandinavia.
The pattern resulted in rainfall over Southern Germany, where it fell on already saturated ground caused by the country’s third wettest May since 1881. The combination of the heavy rainfall and saturated ground resulted in streams and rivers overflowing, leading to floods.
“It is striking that the three wettest Mays on record for Germany have occurred during the last 18 years,” product manager at PERILS Luzi Hitz commented. “At the same time, the country’s average annual temperature has risen by 1.6 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. Given that the air’s capacity to hold moisture rises with increasing temperatures, it is plausible that the warming climate will result in more precipitation in the form of prolonged periods of heavy rainfall, potentially leading to further floods similar to those experienced in southern Germany in early June.”
The industry loss may seem significant at €1,568 million, but this figure has been exceeded on three separate occasions since 2002. The bigger losses came during the Elbe Floods of August 2002, the Summer Floods of June 2013, and the Ahrtal Floods of July 2021.
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