The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have spoken out in a heartbreaking statement after extreme flooding killed more than 125 people in Germany.
Prince William and Kate paid their respects to those lost in the 'devastating' disaster as officials warned they believe the death tolls will rise as searches continue.
Speaking out this evening, the royal couple said: "The damage and loss caused by the flooding disaster in Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands is devastating.
"We are thinking of all those affected by these floods."
As well as Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland have also been hit by the fatal weather, with thousands more people missing.
The weather has downed mobile phone masts across the area, meaning many are struggling to contact loved ones in the chaos.
Some 15,000 police officers, soldiers and emergency service workers have been drafted in to help with the rescue operation.
Houses can be seen lying in ruins, while people are visible wading through the waterlogged streets, looking at the rubble their homes have become.
The death and destruction has been caused by heavy rainfall, prompting the worst flooding in decades.
And climate change experts have now said that such weather could happen again if climate change is not reversed.
Myles Allen is a professor of geosystem science at the University of Oxford and a co-author of the UN's report on climate change.
He told Sky News : "A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so precisely this kind of very intense summer rainfall event is exactly the kind of extreme event that we'd expect to be becoming already more frequent under climate change.
"So yes, I think we are seeing the weather dice being loaded in favour of this kind of event. As the world becomes warmer these weather events become more likely...The sooner we stop the warming, the better."
And Dr Michal Nachmany, chief executive of Climate Policy Radar, added: "You'd thought we'd be smart by now. You'd thought we'd wise-up.
"And this is the mildest and the most polite that climate change will be to us. It is only going to get worse."
Entire communities lie in ruins after swollen rivers swept through towns and villages in the western German states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, Belgium as well as the Netherlands in recent days.
Germany's loss of life has been described as the worst in years, with 12 of the dead residents of a home for disabled people south of Cologne who were surprised by the flash floods during the night.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, around 1,300 people have been reported as missing in the Ahrweiler district , the district government said on Facebook.
