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26 July 2007

What’s really going on here

This is not "a poor summer". Britain has been experiencing its worst ever climate change event. We m

By Mark Lynas

As I write, everything of value in my office is piled up on the top shelves. The police have been round to warn us of imminent flooding, and our area of the Thames in Oxford remains under a severe flood warning. The railway line is cut in both directions, and many of the roads in the county are also under water. In Lower Wolvercote last night the water had begun to rise up through the drains, and the word from the Environment Agency is that flood levels are now higher even than in the great flood of 1947.

None of this is surprising, given the intensity of the downpours that swept central England on 20 July. I have never seen anything like it – except perhaps while riding out a developing hurricane on the Outer Banks of North Carolina five years ago. The rainfall had that same torrential violence, the sky that same ominous dark quality. All that was missing was a storm-force wind. Scanning the Met Office radar picture on the web, I recognised the same rainfall intensity as you find in a hurricane’s eyewall, with an arc of bright red and white indicating the most extreme measurable precipitation. My closest weather station at Brize Norton recorded 126mm of rain that day, almost double the previous daily record of 70mm established in 1968.

This summer has certainly been unusual. A persistent kink in the jet stream has delivered a near-constant flow of Atlantic depressions to the British Isles, driving them much further south than normal. Our 20 July downpour was something of a “perfect storm”, a slow-moving front bringing warm, moist air from Europe into contact with a cooler air mass from the west. The result was fearsome clouds bursting up to 10,000 metres or more in height – hence the day-long gloom and the monsoon underneath. The flip-side of this is the extreme heat and drought being experienced in eastern Europe and the Balkans. Hungary and Romania have baked in temperatures of more than 40°C, with wildfires sweeping Greece and dozens dying from heatstroke.

What I find ironic is that the clamour over climate change seems to be dying down just as Bri tain experiences perhaps its worst-ever climate-change-related event. The Environment Agency head, Barbara Young, consistently reminds the media of this bigger picture, and the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, has also talked about the “unprecedented” nature of the rainfall, but the press is already out to find some hapless official to blame. The chatter over Radio Oxford’s airwaves has been about whether the rivers should still be dredged, whether the local authorities organised enough sandbags in advance, and whether 4x4s are suddenly a necessity to ferry children home from flooded schools. But the fact is that the amounts of rainfall, as Benn suggests, have been so extreme that any measure of preparation would have been bound to fail.

Pernicious stuff

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This widespread refusal to acknowledge the climate-change-related nature of the floods is worsened by meteorologists who insist on pointing to short-term factors – such as the jet stream, or La Niña – rather than admitting the longer-term realities of a changing climate. A particularly egregious example came on 22 July from John Kettley, writing in the Daily Mail. “In my view, none of the severe weather we have experienced is proof of ‘climate change’,” Kettley asserted. “It is just a poor summer – nothing more, nothing less – something that was the norm throughout most of the Sixties . . .” He went on to talk about “a pattern of warming and cooling” in previous decades, as if the warming trend we are experiencing now were somehow nothing new.

This is pernicious stuff. Kettley must know that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that current global warming is unprecedented in historical timescales, and that it is directly related to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions. The Met Office is one of the leading climate-change research centres in the world, and adheres solidly to this consensus. Of course, no single weather event is ever “caused” by climate change, but the warming of the atmosphere is a constant underlying factor because of the physical reality that a warmer atmosphere can hold much more water vapour. Therefore, for any given rainfall event, the resulting precipitation is likely to be more intense. This is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms, in its February report: “The frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas, consistent with warming and observed increases in atmospheric water vapour.” Because of global warming, all of our weather is now partly unnatural, given that it takes place on a planet nearly 1° Celsius warmer than it would be under natural conditions.

As the IPCC states, there is an identifiable glo bal trend towards more intense precipitation – in all regions, and in all seasons. Even where the climate overall is becoming drier, as in Australia, when rain does arrive, it falls with undreamt-of ferocity. That means flash floods, even in places far away from rivers that may never have experienced flooding before. In the past month or so, extreme weather has been evident across the globe. In Sudan 50 people have been killed in floods, in China 400. Colombia, Pakistan and Ethiopia have also been hit. None of this on its own “proves” climate change, but it clearly fits the prevailing trend. There is more energy in the system, driving a more vigorous hydrological cycle.

Climate change is a change in the average weather. It does not mean that every British summer will bring floods – in fact, it is predicted that the average summer will continue to get drier, particularly across southern England. But it does mean that when the cloudbursts do happen, we are all going to have to be better prepared, both mentally and logistically. This may mean stronger measures to stop people making unnecessary journeys, which contributes to congestion and stops the emergency services being able to reach affected areas. (I am constantly struck by how reluctant people are to allow natural events like the weather to interrupt their cherished routines: even after days of severe weather warnings they still stream on to the roads as if on autopilot.) It should also mean much stricter rules about housebuilding on flood plains, unless the new properties are expressly designed to cope with flood risk.

Above all, it means being honest with ourselves about what we are seeing. Admitting our own culpability in this emerging crisis is a recipe not for despair, but for hope: we can still stop the situation deteriorating beyond the point of no control, but only if we act fast to cut back on greenhouse-gas emissions. And that means politicians in particular need to sell the climate mitigation message better, making explicit links, for example, between the misery of people in Tewkesbury and the determination of BAA to expand Heathrow and Gatwick. Polls show that the general public is still not convinced about the reality of climate change, even as the flood waters rise towards people’s front doors.

Mark Lynas is the author of “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet” (Fourth Estate, £12.99)

UK flood defences: THE FACTS

Flood defence has been co-ordinated by the Environment Agency since the 1953 east coast floods, in which more than 300 died.

Only 57 per cent of Britain’s flood defences are in good working order.

On 3 July, Hilary Benn announced a rise in funding for defences from £600m to £800m. Spending has doubled since 1997.

A memo leaked in June said defences are facing cuts of £15m that could last until 2011.

The average insurance claim by a flooded homeowner is for £15,000-£30,000. The July floods caused £1bn of damage.

Overloaded Victorian sewers account for roughly 50 per cent of preventable floods.

The Environment Agency is looking to “manage” flooding by directing water on to uninhabited land rather than building barriers.

For Exercise Triton 04 in summer 2004, 1,000 service personnel enacted a scenario in which floods wreck half the country.

Building on flood plains has left 1.7 million homes at risk. The Environment Agency objects to thousands of such planning proposals, but 20 per cent pass regardless.

Planning law stipulates a flood risk of less than once every 100 years (once every 2,000 years in London). Dutch law requires a risk of at least once every 10,000 years.

Thames Barrier closures increased from once a year on average in the 1980s to 19 in January 2003 alone.

Compiled by Matthew Holehouse

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