Burnham said major weather events had been “coming thick and fast”, with a number of named storms battering the UK in recent months.
The rain event on Wednesday was not technically a storm, so was not named as such by the Met Office, but Burnham said that “led to a worse situation than the others that we have been warned about”.
He added: “It’s not easy for anybody because we are seeing what people call one in one-hundred-year weather events happening every year or so now.
“The weather has changed.”
Mr Brown agreed with this, saying: “We are seeing more intense and more frequent rainfall and the flood risk is increasing.
“The latest estimate show that in parts of the North West climate change might result in about approximately 20-30% increase in rainfall so they will be substantial changes in the long-term for us.”
The Tyndall Centre in Manchester is one of the country’s leading climate change research centres.
Ruth Wood from the centre said the flooding on Wednesday was “consistent with what we’d expect from climate change”.
“The intensification of rainfall events we’ve seen across Europe over the last decades has been attributed – and shown – that humans are having an influence on that intensification of rainfall so more frequent intense heavy rainfall,” she said.
As the region’s clean up from floods continues Met Office yellow warnings for snow and ice have been issued for much of England and Wales and parts of Scotland over the weekend.
