is the floods affecting?

Question

well here in wales so far so good' we are lucky at the moment thank god.
but i do feel very sad for anyone who is going through this awful time of the floods,never known anything like it' for this time of the year its very frightening,and is this a warning to us.???god help us all.

Answer 1

In many respects it should be taken as a warning. To the scientists it's no surprise that there has been such a dramatic increase in the number of floods and other extreme weather events in recent years.

You don't need to go back all that far and such events were something of a rarity. There was the winter of 47, the winter of 63, the summer of 76 and the storm of 89 - four extreme events in 50 years. More recently we've experienced events of this magnitude once or twice a year. This year it's been flooding several times over, last year it was droughts, the year before was record high tgemperatures, the year before was the heatwave etc etc.

Quite how much of the recent flooding can be blamed on global warming isn't clear. We know that a warmer world is a wetter world and we're seeing the predictions of the scientists come true with remarkable accuracy in this respect.

A scientific report which will be published on Thursday will say that 85% of the increase in rainfall in the mid northerly latititudes (the band that includes the UK) is the result of human induced climate change.

The future predictions are that there will be a continued increase in adverse weather events. The flooding we saw a few weeks ago was the worst in recorded UK history but within a month even worse flooding has occured.

Usually in the UK we get what is referred to as the Azores High, this is high pressure coming up from Southern Europe bringing with it generally dry and sunny conditions. This year it's progress has been halted by the Jet Stream. This band of high altitude, fast moving air is further south than normal and is preventing our summer weather reaching us. Consequently it causes rainfall levels more normally associated with winter conditions, still far short of what we've seen recently but certainly a contributory factor.

Answer 2

I think we just answered a similar question, so you're getting similar answers. Here's mine...

Trust Trevor, above, to turn this into an “it’s all down to global warming” scare-fest.

The following is a piece in the Sunday Telegraph from, well, Sunday, obviously.

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Rain is making it a “retro summer.” A look back shows the Sixties were just as soggy.

One of this column’s most important tasks is to place destructive or exceptional weather events into a proper historical and statistical context. “I can’t remember the last time it rained like this” is all very well as an opening gambit down the pub, but such subjective remarks should have no place in news bulletins or weather reports.

Usually it is easy to find many examples, quickly forgotten by most folk, of earlier examples of extreme weather. The Yorkshire floods in late June, for instance, mirrored similar floods in the same county in June 1982 and July 1973.

Although this summer is starting to look like a record-breaker in terms of quantity and frequency of rain, the prolonged downpour over such a large part of England and Wales on Thursday night and Friday [19th – 20th July] has been equalled or beaten a number of times in the last century.

On Friday, two inches (50mm) or more of rain fell across a huge triangular-shaped zone stretching from Maidstone in the east to Bristol in the west to Shrewsbury in the north – an area twice as large as that hit by the late June deluge.

Four inches (100mm) or more fell over much of Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and small parts of Wiltshire and Warwickshire. Pershore had 5.73in (145.4mm) in two days and RAF Brize Norton reported 5.02in (127.6mm).

In the last 50 years, the only high-summer downpours to match last week’s in both volume and geographical extent were on August 25, 1986 – the bank holiday washout associated with hurricane “Charley” – July 28, 1969, and July 10, 1968. On that latter date the four-inch threshold was topped at 65 rain-monitoring sites in a huge area extending from Devon to Lincolnshire, and 6.83in (173mm) fell, mostly within six hours, at Chew Stoke, Somerset. The resulting floods were more extensive than any this summer.

It is tempting to describe this as a “retro summer” because in many respects it is reminiscent of the appalling summers that some readers will recall from the Fifties and Sixties. It is also interesting that summer floods occurred more frequently during epochs (1912-1931 and 1948-1974) when summers were relatively cool.

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So, not actually that unusual, then?

Also note that one of the most important factors in the recent flooding is the fact that the government has allowed 2 million homes to be built on flood plains. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to recognise that, if you concrete over the flood plains, the flood waters will have nowhere to go.

And what’s the government’s cunning plan to resolve this? Build another 3 million homes on the flood plains.

Brilliant!

As ever with global warming - don't believe the hype.

Answer 3

Perhaps the flooding is made worse by man...


...but not for the global warming reasons you are seeking.

It is very well known that man has manipulated the environment in a way that makes flooding more common. Ever increasing pavement, buildings, the removal of woodlands in favor of agricultural use, dams, levees, reservoirs, and drainage systems do not allow for the widest extremes of natural variability. Instead, they shoot for the mean, doing a cost vs risk analysis. In some cases, dealing with the aftermath of those giant swings in weather is cheaper than providing for EVERY eventuality.

That is just an unfortunate reality of living in society.

Answer 4

i dont think of of so regardless of if i m a staunch supporter of non congress government. its in our minds what we sow is what we are waiting to obtain. i m a maharashtrian and living outdoors maharashtra for 7 yrs now and that to at different places in north india and function on no account discovered any harsh treatment in direction of me or maharashtrian. this u can discover out if u substitute ur ideology. and why bypass to north and south india dont u think of of why needed maharashtra, vidharbha, marathwada and konkan have a style of of frictions indoors of regardless of if from an comparable state.

Answer 5

Thank you Trevor, for that scientific and full report.
I do, unfortunatly, believe that the occurance of these types of weather is going to persist due to global warming.

Answer 6

well actually global warmin is meltin the ice caps and of course thatll cause more precipation and itll ranin more and flood more