Monsoon Britain! Is the future cloudbursts and floods?

 

 

 

 

 

Just when we thought it was safe to go back out into the weather, we are being hit with a new claim of a bizarre change to the traditional British climate.

As we reel from the severest-ever drought — and sweltering July, the hottest month on record — scientists are now telling us that our damp and drizzly island is being increasingly battered by monsoon-style downpours.

Research at Newcastle University — to be presented at the British Association’s Festival of Science in Norwich this week — shows rainstorms have doubled in intensity over much of the country during the past 40 years. Some parts of Britain, it concludes, are regularly drenched with almost a foot of rainfall over just ten days — the sort of monsoons experienced in India.

Worst hit is the east of Scotland. But scientists say the whole of Scotland and north-west England receive a ferocious downpour at least once a year, especially in autumn.

Even in south-east England, where the number of rainstorms are decreasing, they are becoming fiercer when they do occur, often causing widespread flooding.

And who can forget the devastating deluge at Boscastle two years ago, when eight inches of rain plummeted down in four hours?

‘Intensities previously experienced every 25 years now occur at six-year intervals,’ says Dr Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University’s School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. ‘There have been changes in timing, with extreme events predominating in autumn months.’

So what are we to make of our new climate of extremes, with torrential rain following baking heat, and floods alternating with drought?

Somehow it feels distinctly un-British.

Though only ducks and farmers really love the rain — and farmers only when it suits them — we may, when pressed, confess a sneaking affection even for archetypal British drizzle.

Such soft rain washes through our greatest literature. Shakespeare may have lamented in Twelfth Night that ‘the rain it raineth every day’, but in The Merchant Of Venice, he describes ‘the gentle rain from heaven’.

Tennyson wrote of the ‘useful trouble of the rain’. The Book of Common Prayer praises God for sending ‘gracious rain’, and one of our favourite hymns extols the ‘good gift of soft refreshing rain’.

We have also, of course, always been swept by great storms, from the winds that scattered the Spanish Armada in 1588 to the 1987 hurricane which blew down 15 million trees in south-east England overnight.

During the great storm of December 1703, 140-knot winds toppled the newly-built Eddystone lighthouse off Plymouth Sound, and washed a small boat — with one man and two boys aboard — clean out of Cornwall’s Helford Estuary, only to dump it 175 miles away, on the shores of the Isle of Wight.

But it is the drizzle, not the downpours, which continues to define us. The Lonely Planet guide to England says: ‘Anyone who spends any extended period of time in England will sympathise with the locals’ obsession with the weather,’ adding: ‘You can expect cloudy weather and light drizzle in any part at any time.’

Experts have long warned that Britain’s weather will become more extreme — drier in summer, wetter in winter, and with more violent storms as the climate heats up.

Scientists at the University of Reading predict very wet winters will become five times more common over the course of this century. A Government report last year forecast that scorching summers will occur every five years by 2050.

And after torrential rains washed out last year’s Glastonbury Festival, Baroness Young, head of the Environment Agency, cautioned: ‘This sort of event will become more frequent as climate change takes place.

‘If people are worried by what is happening, they should know it is going to become more common.’

The science behind the predictions is complex. But put simply, three factors increase rainstorms in a warming world. As the world heats up, more energy is injected into the climate, which finds expression in storms.

There is a greater contrast between temperatures on the land — which warms up and cools down faster — and at sea, and this generates stronger winds and greater instability.

Warmer seas cause more water to evaporate, which in turn comes down as heavier rainfall.

But what surprises the scientists is that this appears to be happening so fast. Dr Fowler says what is occurring had not been expected for nearly a hundred years. ‘The observed pattern of change over the past 40 years,’ she says, ‘is very similar to that predicted for climate models for the end of the 21st century’.

If we are to have more torrential rainfall, this is bound to cause more floods. The heavier it falls, the less chance it has to be absorbed by the ground and plants, and the more likely it is to race off the land into streams and rivers, causing them to burst their banks.

The Environment Agency estimates that days of heavy rainfall will become three or four times more frequent over the coming decades, making flooding ten times more common.

A government study, headed by its chief scientist Prof Sir David King, concluded annual damage from flooding could rise from the present £1 billion to £25 billion, and the number of Britons seriously at risk of it from 1.5 million to 3.5 million.

We are unprepared. Half of all the housing built in Britain since World War II, covering an area the size of the West Midlands, has been erected on land prone to inundation.

Our continuing determination to concrete over the countryside further heightens the risk of flooding, because it means the water has nowhere to drain.

Yet a Government report has concluded that half the country’s flood defences, supposedly protecting two million buildings, are in poor condition.

Another official report warned that if spending on these defences did not increase, large parts of the country would have to be abandoned altogether. Yet ministers are proposing to cut expenditure on them.

Greater, heavier rainfall will increase soil erosion, making farming more difficult, and may waterlog vast tracts of land. Farm — an organisation combining farmers, consumers and environmentalists — reckons it may become impossible to grow crops on 86 per cent of the East Anglian fens.

And the precipitation can kill tree root. Cedars at the National Trust’s Osterley Park, and hedges at Westbury Court Garden in Gloucestershire, have already been affected.

‘Après moi le deluge,’ Louis XV is supposed to have said, forecasting the French Revolution. Perhaps Tony Blair — himself contemplating being swept away on the floodtide of history — is in a similar frame of mind.

The rest of us would be wise to fish out our wellies, button up our raincoats, and seek a more secure protection from that great symbol of Britishness, the umbrella.

I live in a flat, bring on the floods!

I live in a flat' date=' bring on the floods![/quote']

 

Which floor is it on?:thinking:

I stayed overnight in Saltford Quays the other night, and the rainfall was so intense that I was up to my ankles in water walking along the train platform...it had become like a small river!! And people I know hear say it never used to be quite so bad.

Which floor is it on?:thinking:

 

 

3rd floor. On a slight hill as well.

If we flood around here, than it means that hampshire is under water :cool:

If we flood around here' date=' than it means that hampshire is under water :cool:[/quote']

I was fairly near to you a while ago...EAst Grinstead...I think that's sort of close to Hampshire. It's a very Rural area and it would be devastated by flooding!! Guess they'd all better start looking for 3rd floor flats.

I was fairly near to you a while ago...EAst Grinstead...I think that's sort of close to Hampshire. It's a very Rural area and it would be devastated by flooding!! Guess they'd all better start looking for 3rd floor flats.

 

Only about 97 miles away.

Only about 97 miles away.

FIgured about that. THere are some very good-hearted people there...but not alot of money, at least where I was. The expression in New Orleans is 'Wealth buys Altitude'. I know that's not quite true here, but it applies in some parts of the country. In the event of severe flooding, the least well off would be the hardest hit.

FIgured about that. THere are some very good-hearted people there...but not alot of money' date=' at least where I was. The expression in New Orleans is 'Wealth buys Altitude'. I know that's not quite true here, but it applies in some parts of the country. In the event of severe flooding, the least well off would be the hardest hit.[/quote']

 

I think you got the wrong end of the stick.

 

What i meant was that east Grinstead is about 97 miles away from andover, unless it's a different east grinstead

I think you got the wrong end of the stick.

 

What i meant was that east Grinstead is about 97 miles away from andover, unless it's a different east grinstead

As far as I know, there's only the one...lol...it's in the South-WEst, RIght? parts of the area were fairly posh, but where I was, just outside of Forest Row, people had everything they need, but not alot extra...the woman I stayed with keeps a few chickens for eggs and gets her milk from a dairy farmer up the road.

 

I don't claim to know much about the economy here...I'm just the tourist, so if I misrepresented something, my appologies. Anyway, suffice to say I've fallen in love with England and hope the flooding doesn't get that bad.

As far as I know, there's only the one...lol...it's in the South-WEst, RIght? parts of the area were fairly posh, but where I was, just outside of Forest Row, people had everything they need, but not alot extra...the woman I stayed with keeps a few chickens for eggs and gets her milk from a dairy farmer up the road.

 

I don't claim to know much about the economy here...I'm just the tourist, so if I misrepresented something, my appologies. Anyway, suffice to say I've fallen in love with England and hope the flooding doesn't get that bad.

 

You're still here? How long are you staying??:stunned::P

well it would have been an interesting article if it hadn't been inaccurate in the second line. We haven't just had the most severe drought. that would have to have been the one I heard tell about when I was little. the one which affected the whole country, and meant water was cut off except for certain times of the day, and you had to go to standpipes in the road for your drinking water.

 

this summer's drought was completely different. it only affected the south, and was more to do with the insufficient supplies due to overcrowding down there.

You're still here? How long are you staying??:stunned::P

I'm flying home this Friday...