UK only global warming?!?

Question

Ok, so obviously all this heavy rain and flooding that we're currently having is signs of global warming/climate change etc. But ive just come back from spain, and realised that there (and just like the rest of the world) the weather is no different to what it usually is - nice and warm and sunny!
why is this? and is the flooding due to climate change or is it because of the azores having our usual sumemr weather?

Answer 1

I have an advantage in answering your question in that a) I'm in the UK, b) I'm a climatologist and c) I've spent the last few days analysing the recent flooding.

It would be a mistake to blame the recent adverse weather solely on global warming. Weather, be it normal or adverse, is caused and affected by a great many factors and the UK has one of the most diverse weather systems on the planet making any kind of forecasting or climatic predictions particulary tricky.

Whilst no one event can be blamed on global warming what we can do is to look at the liklihood of such an event occuring. This is what we call the Return Event and is measured in years, a return event of 100 for example means that such conditions should be experienced once in 100 years.

Taking the abnormalities experienced since 2000 gives a return event value of 20 million (that's before factoring in the latest flooding). It's quite clear that something is going on and that climate change is having an impact in many different ways - the 2007 floods are the worst in history, the 2006 drought was the worst for over 100 years, 2005 was the hottest year on record, 2004 recorded the highest ever temperatures and the most severe heatwave etc etc.

These are all events that should occur once every few hundred years but they're occuring more and more frequently. Every one of the hottest years on record has occured recently and although it may seem strange, 2007 is on target to become the new hottest year.

Climate looks at trends, not one off events or single years, there are too many other factors involved to be able to focus on such a small scale. The trends show a distinct upward trend in the number of floods, droughts, heatwaves, storms etc to be affecting the UK.

So, is global warming responsible for all this flooding? No, at least not by itself, it's just one of several factors that are involved.

Answer 2

"obviously all this heavy rain and flooding that we're currently having is signs of global warming/climate change

REALLY??? And I thought that the UK was famous for its rain and bad weather. MAYBE, all the hot summers we have had over the past few years was a sign of global warming/climate change, and this is a sign that things are returning to normal.

BUT, more likely this is just the way of things and you are to young or stupid to remember the different weather we have in this country.

Answer 3

There is a load of crap spoken about global warming or climate change. One of the worst offences in my view is the melting ice at the North Pole. This happens every year and has probably done so for millions of years. It's called summer when the sun never sets at the N.Pole. Ice melts in continuous direct sunlight.

While it is true the northern hemisphere is warming up slightly, the southern hemisphere is cooling down, slightly. This may be a continuous process which has gone on for millions of years.

Next big fake load of crap - telling Londoners that London gets less rain than the city of Rome, like it was some new phenomenon. It is not. London has received about 23 - 25 inches of rain per year for the last several dozens centuries. London has a low rainfall but massive water from 35 rivers which flow through it and into the Thames.

Lots of rain over UK. UK is overcast 75% of the time and subject to 'serious flooding'. This is not new. I was born in 1941 and experienced the worst ever winter on record in c1946/47. In Germany thousands froze to death. Six feet of snow in my Kent village. Could not move for days.

In the early 1950s there were major and severe floods across East Anglia. Towns and villages flooded, people abandoned to their fate! Horrible. No global warming then.
Anyone living on or near a flood plane will get flooded, even if the house was built 200 years ago. One day the river will burst it's banks and spread out two miles wide, etc.

Present UK weather - this is being caused by activity in the Pacific Ocean, which is causing the Jet-stream to remain too far south. The Jet is stuck somewhere south of Paris. What this normally does is to move north to somewhere near Iceland [the island not the shop]. The Jet then sucks warm air up from the southern Atlantic during the summer months and usually dumps much of it on us. You know, wind blowing in from the Azores, danger of sun stroke, wear lots of sun cream, stay out of Hyde Park, this is an English blazing five day summer.

What are the three most famous words heard on the BBC in summer? "RAIN STOPPED PLAY". So, what's new? Only the amount of rain. It has damn all to do with Globular warming or any such piffle. It's because the Jet streem is stuck too far south.

If we are getting extra water by way of rain, how come my garden is bone dry? I mean, when I bought this house about ten years ago, there were no tree roots showing in the lawn. Now there are. This follows a couple of bone dry winters. Maybe these roots will sink back down if we get enough rain this summer.

All this rain means apples the size of mellons at harvest come September. Get out there and get pickin'.

Edit: The real reason why so many scientists and politicans go on about Global Warming and Climate Change, is because they know than unless they add these 'magic' words to their begging letters, the UK.gov is not going to cough up any money for their pet project. "New swings in the children's playground which will not be subject to GLOBAL WARMING shrinkage due to their molecular structure etc etc blah blah!"

Dear Minister for Cash and Profligate Spending - I have a wonderful wheeze of an idea for turning garden waste and old hose pipes, no longer required due to the Nation Wide hosepipe ban, into a high performance fuel, which will not add one gram of heat to the GLOBAL WARMING situation which I told you of in my last letter. Blah waffle blah! etc.

Answer 4

The over proliferation of rain is due to the fact that we never had enough last year, so it is Gods way of trying to make it up.
Alternatively, we are getting the same amount of rain as we did per head of population in the 1950's, honest it does collate if you look it up.

Answer 5

besides the shown fact that it extremely is hard to have self assurance at this 2nd, the components is getting warmer - no longer in basic terms interior the united kingdom yet around the area. If it weren't for worldwide warming then the present chilly spell could actual be worse. This chilly climate is a cycle which happens at approx 15 to sixteen 365 days intervals. The final such occasion became into in 1995-6 whilst temps fell with the aid of two.374°C, before that it became into 1978-9 which observed a drop in temps of three.631°C, before that became into the severe wintry climate of 1962-3 the place teps fell with the aid of four.416°C, before that became into the the two severe wintry climate of 1946-7 which observed temps fall with the aid of four.181°C. This wintry climate they have in basic terms fallen with the aid of a million.569°C making it the least significant of the 15 such activities on checklist. do no longer project, this chilly spell would be over in a pair of weeks and temperatures are set to return to their pre chilly snap point. keep in mind that it is in basic terms a climate adventure limited to a quite small portion of the planet. On a international scale it extremely is the main well-liked wintry climate on checklist. before the onset of the chilly climate the united kingdom became into experiencing a persistent era of strangely heat climate - it is in basic terms a blip in an otherwise upward trend, and it extremely is an fullyyt predictable blip at that.

Answer 6

probably but we just cant win here
if we were having a scorcher of a summer it would be down to global warming
if like now we are having floods ,thunder&lightning etc its down to global warming

Answer 7

Not only UK.
There was some snow in Argentina last week !!! Strange isn't it?

By the way, we still hope for a beautiful summer.

Answer 8

if if dont stop raining the uk will be global sporning

Answer 9

ITS GLOBAL WARMING I HATE IT we dont have sunshine and its summer GORDON BROWN ISNT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT!

Answer 10

thats weird lol. i think it is because england is crap neway... we always have dodgy weather!!!!!