Read here. The IPCC and its dreary band of Climategate "scientists" had proclaimed that climate models predicted increased flooding for the U.S. Midwest due to global warming. Empirical-based scientists investigated said speculative claims and found them without merit.
Villarini et al. examined 75 years of flooding for the following states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois.
"In an effort to determine if Upper Midwest U.S. floods have been increasing in recent years..."analyzed the annual maximum instantaneous flood peak distributions for 196 U.S. Geological Survey streamflow stations with a record of at least 75 years over the Midwest U.S."...four U.S. researchers report that in the vast majority of cases where streamflow changes were observed, they were "associated with change-points (both in mean and variance) rather than monotonic trends," and they indicate that "these non-stationarities are often associated with anthropogenic effects." But rather than increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions, they cite such things as "changes in land use/land cover, changes in agricultural practice, and construction of dams and reservoirs."...they conclude that "there is little indication that anthropogenic climate change has significantly affected the flood frequency distribution for the Midwest U.S." And as they make doubly clear in the abstract of their paper, they say that "trend analyses do not suggest an increase in the flood peak distribution due to anthropogenic climate change."" [Gabriele Villarini, James A. Smith, Mary Lynn Baeck, Witold F. Krajewski 2011: Journal of American Water Resources Association]
Additional flooding/drought, severe-weather, failed-prediction and peer-reviewed postings