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UK power cut threat eases as flood defences hold
Daniel Fineren, Reuters
The threat of widespread power cuts across southwest England has diminished overnight, while over 43,000 homes left powerless by the worst flooding to hit Britain in decades have had their supplies restored, power companies said on Tuesday.
As many as half a million properties could have lost their electricity had a temporary barrier around the Walham power distribution station near Gloucester been overcome by widespread flooding which followed torrential rain on Friday.
But police, firefighters and the military fought through the night to erect barriers to protect the substation as the Severn river overflowed and flood waters rose to 60-year highs, engulfing large parts of southwest England. ..
Hundreds of thousands of homes in western England were still without running water on Tuesday after the flooding which engulfed whole towns and emergency services worked around the clock to rescue stranded residents.
(24 Jul 2007)
Rainfall changes linked to human activity
Daniel Cressey, Nature
Human activity has made the weather wetter in a large slice of the Northern Hemisphere, say researchers. It has also made the regions just south of the Equator wetter, and those just north of it drier.
Agriculture and human health have already been affected, Francis Zwiers of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Toronto and his colleagues report in Nature.
This is the first evidence that human activity has altered rainfall patterns. “We expected rainfall patterns to change, but there’s been no conclusive evidence that we are seeing human effects,” says climate researcher Nathan Gillett, of University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, one of the study’s authors. “This study shows we are.”
To show human influence, the researchers compared observed changes in rainfall during the twentieth century with those predicted by 14 climate models, divided into three groups. One group contained estimates of human greenhouse-gas emissions, one included only natural factors such as volcanic aerosols, and a third contained both.
The models including both human and natural influences gave the best fit to the observed trends. ..
(23 Jul 2007)
The abstract and figures (1, 2, 3) are available free.
England under water: scientists confirm global warming link to increased rain
Michael McCarthy, The Independent
It’s official: the heavier rainfall in Britain is being caused by climate change, a major new scientific study will reveal this week, as the country reels from summer downpours of unprecedented ferocity.
More intense rainstorms across parts of the northern hemisphere are being generated by man-made global warming, the study has established for the first time an effect which has long been predicted but never before proved.
The study’s findings will be all the more dramatic for being disclosed as Britain struggles to recover from the phenomenal drenching of the past few days, during which more than a month’s worth of rain fell in a few hours in some places, and floods forced thousands from their homes.
The “major rainfall event” of last Friday fully predicted as such by the Met Office has given the country a quite exceptional battering, with the Thames still rising. In Gloucester water levels had reached 34 feet, just 12 inches below flood defences the same level as during the flood of 1947 although a police spokesman said last night that the River Severn had stopped rising. ..
(23 Jul 2007)
Brown: UK must adapt to climate change
Press release, Politics.co.uk
The UK will need to reorganise its infrastructure to meet the challenges of climate change, Gordon Brown said today.
The prime minister admitted the UK must be better prepared for the heavy flooding which has devastated many parts of England in recent weeks. However, the prime minister was careful to stress the extent of flooding was not due to a failure of government planning.
Mr Brown insisted the Environment Agency had been adequately funded to provide flood defences, but admitted the government would need to reassess the issue as climate change increases the occurrences of freak weather.
“Like every advanced industrial country we are coming to terms with the issues surrounding climate change,” he said, in a monthly press conference dominated by the recent floods. Many of the country’s 19th century infrastructures may be inappropriate in the face of climate change, Mr Brown said.
Environment secretary Hilary Benn has been tasked with a review of flood defences. The prime minister said today this would include the sitting of infrastructure, as well as flood defences and drainage. Mr Benn this afternoon updated MPs on the flooding. He told the Commons funding would be available to help local councils rebuild and said the review of this summer’s flooding would look at any lessons to be taken from the past few days. ..
(23 Jul 2007)
We must face up to the flooding, not flee to the sun
Jackie Ashley, The Guardian
..Here is the brutal truth: however good our flood defences, transport planning, emergency relief and so forth, it is all inadequate if we don’t face up to the primary question: not “Why hasn’t the government been better prepared?” but “Isn’t our failure to respond to climate change by changing our economy and lifestyles simply idiotic?”.
Above all, what we need is a new politics, ready and opportunistic enough to join the dots. We shouldn’t have heard mainly about extra money for local authorities, or debates about new housing, relevant though they are. We should have heard Brown, Miliband and the rest coming straight out and saying plainly that this is a further example of what lies ahead for us, time and again, if we don’t change our ways. They should have grabbed the opportunity to get us thinking afresh about the changes we need to make.
Why? Because it’s going to be hard, and controversial, and the number of desperate naysayers is just going to rise. That is human nature. Was there a more eloquent example of our customary short-term reaction than reports that ever more of us are going to respond to the (climate-change-caused) bad summer by getting into (climate-change-causing) jets and flying to the Mediterranean – where, by the way, global warming is causing innumerable heatwave deaths? ..
(23 Jul 2007)
