marklynas.orgBritain's floods - what's really going on 26 July 07
This is not "a poor summer". Britain has been experiencing its worst ever climate change event. We must recognise this and our own responsibility for the emerging crisis, writes Mark Lynas.
This article was first published in the New Statesman on 26 July 2007. Original here.
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 4×4s 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
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.
Comments
Peter Winters BHI
July 26th, 2007 at 08:55 PM
Hi Mark,
I was wondering when you were going to write about the floods. Good luck!
I have come to think of that argument “was this weather event caused by global warming?” to be a poor question. If someone asks me that question, the way I tend to answer it is to say that we should realise that we have significantly changed the atmosphere of the planet (amongst many other things) and that no weather event is truly “natural” any more. I suspect that if humans had not been civilised over the last 10,000 years, we would have quite a different climate – and certainly quite different fauna and flora. In that sense, global warming has a part to play in all our weather.
Has anyone attempted to calculate what our weather/climate would be like without human influence?
Best,
Peter
jim roland
July 27th, 2007 at 02:15 AM
Hi Mark,
Surely the surveys are saying that most people accept climate is changing? It’s just that (i) some dispute whether it’s mostly humanly caused (ii) 56% in a recent poll agreed that many leading experts disputed any human contribution to climate change – an easy impression to get, but many of the respondents may still themselves believe it’s largely humanly caused.
Great “ENOUGH” protest by Oxfordians, still Associated Newspapers including London Evening Standard have managed to report that it was about improving flood defences. Anyway, I may suggest they copy this at next month’s Heathr0w dem0.
Jim
jim roland
July 29th, 2007 at 03:14 AM
Since I made above comment, the photo referred to has mysteriously vanished from the Daily Mail online article. This had showed protesters wading through waters holding up big red letters spelling the word “ENOUGH” and various placards about stopping climate change, two saying “Gordon CO2 it”.
The webpage and London Evening Standard had captioned this photo “Waterlogged: householders in Osney, Oxford, call on Gordon Brown to ensure that the government provides flood defences that could prevent a repeat of the past week’s misery.”
More on story: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1165102007
jim roland
July 29th, 2007 at 03:24 AM
See Aviation tax: Is this public opinion denial? How the Mail on Sunday misrepresented opinion poll findings on aviation tax policy.
Lynn Vincentnathan
August 1st, 2007 at 06:36 PM
hydrogen sulfide outgassing killing us all off….
....but perhaps not for many thousands of years. At least PBS here in the U.S. is covered it on a segment of Science Now last night (7/31/07), and you can see it at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3318/01.html
(Of course, I think Mark covered this in 6 DEGREES, which I now have on order through: http://amazon.co.uk )
Here’s my recent post on RealClimate.org:Lynn Vincentnathan Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation. 1 August 2007 at 12:34 PM
Okay, Mr. Eminent Mathematician, here’s how I deal with it, since I, too, don’t have time or the necessary post doctoral work in climate science to understand the finer intricacies of the matter….
(Of course, I already knew a little about the natural greenhouse effect (that it warmed the earth enough so life could exit) before I learned about anthropogenic global warming…..so perhaps I did have some background that made it easier for me to understand. Too bad others didn’t have such good science classes in high school, or fell asleep during that part.)
Let’s assume for a moment that we are back in 1990, before 1995 when the first climate science studies started coming out at .05 significance on AGW, or before today, when virtually all bonafided, honest climate scientists are now (if not 15 years ago) highly confident AGW is indeed happening, and most agree many consequences and effects are and will be harmful to people (not to mention to much of biota).
So in this heuristic world there are only theorists, neither side with conclusive evidence, debating whether or not AGW (with negative consequences for people) is happening or will happen. Take Pascal’s model (being a statistician, you may have heard of him), and look at the following scenarios to help you decide what to do (mitigate or fail to mitigate):
1. THE FALSE POSITIVE: If AGW is not happening, and we think it is and we mitigate, that will save us money and strengthen the economy, without lowering living standards or productivity …. at least down to reducing GHGs by three-forths with known technology; perhaps there could be further reductions with future tech. We also reduce many many other problems associated with emitting GHGs (e.g., other pollutants, wars for oil, taxes for roads damaged by Hummers and SUVs, etc). Making AGW perhaps be the best fallacy we ever believed in. (Just remember to divest from Exxon early on, and you should be fine.)
2. THE TRUE POSITIVE: AGW is happening & we mitigate. All the benefits above, plus we reduce a serious problem and avoid the worse.
3. THE TRUE NEGATIVE: AGW is not happening and we don’t mitigate. Well, we don’t have problems from GW, but we do run into economic, financial, and political (war) disaster (not to mention all sorts of other environmental harms) from our proligate, wasteful, gluttonous use of energy and resources.
4. THE FALSE NEGATIVE: AGW is happpening, but we fail to mitigate because mathematical statisticians have convinced us not to do so. Not only do we have all the problems listed in #3 from failure to become resource/energy conservative/efficient, but we cause tremendous death and suffering through AGW for people and much of biota after passing the tipping point where nature in response to the warming causes a lot more warming over the next many thousands of years. Of course, when the water warms and oceans go superanoxic leading to massive hydrogen sulfide outgassing, humans can wear gas masks (assuming we’ve saved a few resources to make those gas masks), but gas masks and oxygen tanks for crops in the field, I don’t know about that (see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3318/01.html ).
Oh yeh, that’s right, we haven’t achieved 95% scientific certainty yet on the hydrogen sulfide outgassing mass extinction scenario. It’s just a theory, based on known chemical/biological principles.
Lynn Vincentnathan
August 16th, 2007 at 07:46 PM
from amazon.co.uk, and it’s great. I wish it were more easily available by mid-November here in the States, since we will be having our International Week on campus & this year’s theme is “Earth Matters.” We are getting R. F. Kennedy to speak!
Lynn Vincentnathan
August 23rd, 2007 at 03:10 PM
Well, I predicted increased severity of storms/hurricanes back in 1990 on my Earth Day displays (info I got from some 2ndary science sources) and Pat Neuman (a fired-for-speaking-out-about-GW-NWS-hydrologist-in-the-Midwest, who used to blog here) predicted increased flooding in the upper Midwest and tried to warn people about the possibility of greater flooding with GW. And it sort of looks like we may have been right.
So we see on www.cnn.com today the teaser-link: “Mother Nature ‘really cruel’ with Midwest floods.” And attributions like that REALLY irk me. When Katrina hit, a visiting priest said something to the effect in his homily, “Nobody is to blame for Katrina. It was Mother Nature.”
That’s like saying that because there was not enough “beyond a reasonable doubt” evidence to convict OJ Simpson, ergo it was definitely another person, so let’s start a huge manhunt for this unknown killer on the loose.
I think it’s wrong to attribute things to Mother Nature at this point that could attributed to GW (bec they fit what is expected), if scientists only had higher confidence.
BTW, when I read the news story in 2004 about the slowdown in the North Atlantic overturning circulation, somehow I didn’t consider it a completely done deal (I’m not sure if the story had caveats or not), but rather one study on something that (let’s face it) fit part of the big package of things to be expected. So I wasn’t surprised to learn recently in a new study that the variability was just too high to make claims at this point. I was actually a bit relieved that the slow down MAY not have started yet. My sense of foreboding did not increase much with the earlier story (esp since many scientists now say a shutdown may not throw Northern Europe into a deep freeze, due to GW offsetting that), and it certainly hasn’t decreased with this more recent study.
GW is still a huge problem — that hasn’t changed — maybe one of the most severe humanity has ever faced.
And that the public (that I swim in) wasn’t even aware of the 1st study or the 2nd, makes this, along with the GW problem (for the most part) much ado about nothing to them. Afterall, every weird and dangerous weather thing is just Mother Nature acting up. What can we do about it, except buy better insurance??
Peter Winters BHI
August 23rd, 2007 at 06:37 PM
Hi Lynn,
The idea of Mother Nature is an interesting metaphor. If someone says “It’s just Mother Nature”, a response could be “And how well are we treating Mother Nature?”
Scientists (and others) confirm that we are badly treating this particular mother and we should expect that this will affect her nurturing behaviou to us!
Best,
Peter