"Record Floods Worsened By Warming And Levees. 'How Idiotic'"

"Is climate change exacerbating record flooding along the Mississippi River that's ravaging parts of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri?

Yes, it is, experts say.

A snow-slogged and rainy springtime in the Midwest has helped drive the river to heights not seen since the Great Flood of 1993. But the exact role that rising temperatures are having on this year's flooding is an open question.

"There's no question in my mind that there's something going on," Gerald Galloway, a civil engineering professor at the University of Maryland's Center for Disaster Resilience and one of the nation's foremost experts on the Mississippi River's hydrology, said in a telephone interview."

Daniel Cusick reports for ClimateWire May 7, 2019.