By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Climate change is likely to worsen floods on rivers such as the Ganges, the Nile and the Amazon this century while a few, including the now-inundated Danube, may become less prone, a Japanese-led scientific study said on Sunday. The findings will go some way to help countries prepare for deluges that have killed thousands of people worldwide and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage every year in the past decade, experts wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.

German authorities urged 15,000 people to evacuate part of a city on the swollen Elbe river Sunday as central Europe faced its worst floods in a decade that have caused havoc in the Czech Republic and Austria and are threatening Hungary. A torrent of flood waters in Germany has turned vast areas into a brown water world, sparked a mass mobilisation of troops, firefighters and volunteers and caused billions of euros in property damage in what one lawmaker termed a "national catastrophe".

Thousands of emergency workers, troops and volunteers in Germany battled Sunday against central Europe's worst floods in over a decade, while the swelling Danube put Budapest on high alert. Rising flood waters in Germany have forced mass evacuations in what one lawmaker termed a "national catastrophe." As Hungary braced for a deluge in its capital, bolstering sandbag barriers as the Danube is expected to reach historic levels, German rescuers focused on the eastern city of Magdeburg.

Flood waters rose in eastern Germany Saturday, forcing the evacuation of homes and a hospital, as Hungary propped up its defences against central Europe's worst floods in a decade. The Danube had reached a record level at Budapest by mid-day. Elsewhere, the Austrian interior ministry confirmed that four people had been killed and two were still missing, raising the death toll in Europe from the past week's floods to at least 18, including 10 in the Czech Republic, which has warned of renewed flood risks.