Floods are likely to continue. Photocredit: hera
The background
What’s going on? Our winters are hot; our summers are wet. And freak weather is likely to continue, said a report in the Bulletin of the American Metereological Society by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US, and the Met Office in the UK. This is – probably, says the study – because of global warming. The report, said The Independent, says that heatwaves and flooding are more likely to happen in the future. The United Kingdom’s heatwave in November, and Texas’ dry summer happened because of climate change (maybe), whilst floods in Thailand probably didn’t happen because of climate change.
Meanwhile, the Committee on Climate Change in the UK is asking whether we’ll be able to cope with more heavy floods. Whatever the cause, it looks like we’re going to have topsy-turvey weather for quite some time.
“While we didn’t find that climate change has affected the odds of all the extreme weather events we looked at, we did see that some events were significantly more likely. Overall, we’re seeing that human influence is having a marked impact on some types of extreme weather,” said Dr Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the UK Met Office, quoted on The Independent.
What did the report find?
That the record warm November in the UK was “at least 60 times more likely to happen because of climate change” than because of natural weather, reported The Guardian. That the heatwave in Texas last year was “20 times more likely” to have happened in this way. The Guardian said that being able to attribute such weather to humans was a “big advance” in climate change science. However, not all weather can be attributed such: the very cold winter in Britain, for instance, was because of natural causes. But the question is still open for researchers.
Why is our summer so wet?
The Times suggested that Britain’s “dismal” summer weather could be a consequence of Arctic sea-ice melting. Global warming makes ice retreat, so cold air is forced south. This means the Arctic is “dangerously over-heating,” which means the jet stream has weakened, leaving us “at the mercy” of wet weather.
This change in weather will make Britons more Nordic
Hadley Freeman on The Guardian said that weather is “a huge deal in this country”, the “lodestar of British small talk”; “the keystone in British self-perception.” Weather has formed the British character – “the grim food and fondness among the natives for exposing flesh even on cold nights” was shocking to Roman legionaries in 100 AD. Our climate gives us our “awkwardness with the opposite gender, a fondness for walking, love of open-air portraits and interest in gardening.” So will climate change affect the British character? “Quite a lot, I’d wager.” We’re actually getting “Scandinavia’s climate” – so the future of England is “essentially one long Ingmar Bergman movie with extra Stieg Larsson gloom.” We won’t have our hopefulness, and “satire will give way to plain misery.” Look at how much we love Scandi murders. “Oh England. Heaven knows you’re miserable now, right?”
