Floods in the UK are getting worse. There\u2019s not much we can do it about it. It\u2019s caused by climate change, which in turn is caused by human beings. It\u2019s payback time.<\/p>\n
There you go. In one paragraph, I\u2019ve saved you having to read British newspapers or watch British TV news for the next few days. Of course, the recent flooding is a nightmare for those affected. It\u2019s also a dream for lazy TV news editors who want to plonk their reporters in front of some interesting backdrop offering trite statements about a human-interest story. But the discussion about the causes of the floods and whether we can \u2013 or should \u2013 do anything about them is rather more worrying than TV\u2019s dumbed-down \u2018news values\u2019.<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
A briefing published by the UK Met Office earlier this month highlights just how unusual the weather is at present. \u2018Although no individual storm can be regarded as exceptional, the clustering and persistence of the storms is highly unusual. December and January were exceptionally wet. For England and Wales this was one of, if not the most, exceptional periods of winter rainfall in at least 248 years. The two-month total (December + January) of 372.2mm for the south-east and central southern England region is the wettest any two-month period in the series from 1910.\u2019 It\u2019s the conveyor belt of stormy weather, rather than any particular individual event, which is causing the problems. The ground is already soaked and rivers are already high; further rainfall has nowhere to go but out on to the flood plains.<\/p>\n
However, a quick look at the Met Office briefing shows that while rainfall in southern England in January was very exceptional, it is hard to glean any particular overall pattern \u2013 other than that rainfall is very variable.<\/p>\n
January rainfall, southern England, 1910-2014. Source: Met Office<\/p><\/div>\n
Indeed, just two years ago, Britain was in drought. Consecutive winters of below-average rainfall had left water companies enforcing restrictions on supply. Then the heavens opened, and it seems to have barely stopped raining since. So how on earth did the head of the Met Office, Dame Julia Slingo, conclude that while there was \u2018no definitive answer\u2019 to what caused the storms, \u2018all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change\u2019? Indeed, Slingo is not alone in her assessment. The prime minister, David Cameron, said in January that he \u2018suspected\u2019 climate change was behind the floods. Labour leader Ed Miliband declared that climate change was sure to bring \u2018more flooding, more storms\u2019. Yet less than a year ago, scientists were assuring us that climate change would lead to more droughts in the future in the UK.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rob Lyons asks who is to blame for the current flooding in Britain. The answer may be … nobody: Floods in the UK are getting worse. There\u2019s not much we can do it about it. It\u2019s caused by climate change, which in turn is caused by human beings. It\u2019s payback time. There you go. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,65,28],"tags":[245,389,570,946,206],"class_list":["post-24268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-environment","category-media","tag-climatechange","tag-davidcameron","tag-england","tag-flooding","tag-severeweather"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6jq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24270,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24268\/revisions\/24270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"January](\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Rainfall-in-Southern-England-1910-2014.jpg\")