Merkel says Germany must do more to tackle climate change

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday that Europe's largest economy must get better and faster in tackling the impact of climate change after record floods caused the country's worst natural disaster in nearly six decades.

"The sum of all events that we are witnessing in Germany and the forces with which they occur all suggest ... that it has something to do with climate change," she told residents of Adenau in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

"We have to hurry, we have to get faster in the fight against climate change."