Our climate really IS getting stormier

Rainstorms really are getting worse. Examining how the UK's weather has changed, the Met Office concluded that heavy downpours were 17% more common in the decade from 2008 to 2017 than they had been between 1961 and 1990.

It also says that our climate is warming up, with hot spells lasting twice as long as they did between 1961 and 1990, and our hottest days nearly a degree warmer than they used to be, while our coldest days are more than a degree and a half milder than between 1961 and 1990. And the number of 'tropical nights' when the temperature never gets below 20 degC (68F) is going up too.

A stormier climate is precisely what scientists have been saying global warming would cause, and the United Nations is now calling for 'unprecedented' action across the world to slash carbon emissions to zero by 2050, and stop the temperature rising more than 1.5 degC above pre-industrial levels.

For more on how climate change affects storms, as well as the history of storms, the role they have played in religion, art, films and literature, plus the methods people have used to try to tame them, see my book Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion). https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Nature-Culture-John-Withington/dp/1780236611

Summer of 76 and the most successful government minister in UK history

This year's glorious summer got me thinking about the best I remember in the UK - 1976, which brought the highest average temperatures since records began. On the hottest day, 3 July, the thermometer climbed to 96.6 deg F (35.9 C), while for the previous 15 days, temperatures reached 90F (32.2C) somewhere in England. 

It was not the driest summer on record - apparently 1955 has that distinction, but there was a drought, so in August, the government appointed a former football referee, Denis Howell, Minister for Drought. (Mr Howell, the Labour MP for Small Heath in Birmingham, also had a day job as Minister for Sport.)

He quickly became dubbed the most successful minister in British history, because everywhere he went, it seemed to rain. I was working as a television reporter for ATV in the Midlands at the time, and I remember covering one of his visits to a drought-stricken area, where, sure enough, he was greeted by a downpour.

Rivers and reservoirs ran dry, there was water rationing and standpipes in some areas, and more people died than usual, but being in a garden or a park or by the sea was glorious.

Russian droughts and Pakistani floods - the connection

I have already blogged about the Pakistan monsoon floods (Aug 11) which have killed at least 2,000 and driven perhaps 20 million from their homes, and Russia’s worst known heatwave (July 15) which has killed more than 50 people in wildfires, and has doubled the death rate in Moscow through soaring temperatures and acid smog.

So what is the connection? Air movements called Rossby waves are supposed to move through the upper atmosphere, but sometimes they get stuck. That has apparently happened this year, and when they do they trap the weather beneath them.

This has brought persistent high pressure over Russia, and troughs over Pakistan . Once you get this gridlock, the weather tends to be self-reinforcing. So as Russia warms up, the ground gets hotter and drier. Grass, brush and forest starts to catch fire, and the soot that’s produced heats the air even more.

Disturbingly, some scientists say that they are exactly the kind of trends you would expect to see with global warming, and that they will get worse. There’s more detail in an interesting article in the British magazine The Economist. http://www.economist.com/

Heatwaves, drownings and vodka

I loved the hot weather while I was in Cornwall, but, as ever it has been claiming victims, especially among the old. In the UK, the Health Protection Agency says its initial impression is that there have been “several hundred excess deaths” over the past two weeks.

This is not particularly surprising. The heatwave of 2003, probably the deadliest Europe has ever seen, is believed to have cost more than 2,000 lives in the UK, and perhaps 50,000 over the continent as a whole.

More surprising is the news from Russia, where temperatures have been pressing close to the all-time Moscow record of 36°C, and the country is suffering what may be its worst drought in a century.

In just a week, more than 230 people have drowned, many of them through going for a swim when tanked up with vodka. The death toll also includes six schoolchildren who drowned, while the summer camp workers who were supposed to be looking after them were drunk.

(See also my blogs of 2nd Feb, 27th June, 26th July, 2009.)

The dust bowl drought

As the hot weather sends devastating wildfires across southern Europe, a reminder that 74 years ago this week, America’s dust bowl heatwave reached its height, with temperatures soaring to 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee and 109°F (44°C) in Chicago.

The prairies had a terrible time in the thirties as the longest drought of the century coupled with decades of over-intensive farming killed off the grasses that normally kept the top soil in place. And it literally blew away, producing great dark clouds which sometimes blackened the sky as far as Washington DC.

Altogether, America’s heatwave killed perhaps 15,000 people from 1934 to 1936. Record temperatures were seen in many states, and one observer said that the “wide Missouri” at Kansas City had been reduced to “a languid thread of water in a great bed of baked mud.”

For more, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Indian heatwave

A heatwave in India is now thought to have killed hundreds of people. With the monsoon rains arriving late, up to 200 have died in Orissa, and temperatures in many parts of the country have reached over 40 degrees.

Seventeen people are said to have perished in Jharkand and seven in Bihar. As so often happens, it is the poor who have suffered worst. Orissa’s minister for disaster management has been asking the federal government to declare the heatwave a “national calamity” so that the families of those killed get better compensation.

Hospitals have opened special wards for victims of heatstroke and mobile ice vans are patrolling the cities, while the government is organising special prayers for rain.

The worst Indian heatwave of recent years came in 1998 when more than 2,000 people died in Orissa alone. The deadliest heatwave of all was probably the one that swept Europe in 2003, and claimed up to 50,000 lives.

Forest fires

Firefighters in Australia are battling dozens of forest fires across Victoria and New South Wales, spawned by one of the worst heatwaves the country has ever seen, with temperatures set to reach 117°F (47°C) this weekend. (I wrote on Monday about the deaths the heat had caused http://disasterhistorian.blogspot.com/2009/02/heatwaves.html.) The fire service is using water bombs from the air, and thousands of volunteers are helping them on the ground.

Australia’s worst forest fires came 26 years ago on 16 February, 1983 – “Ash Wednesday”, killing 47 people in Victoria and 28 in South Australia. The dead included 17 firefighters. Over 300,000 sheep and 18,000 cattle also perished.

Perhaps the worst forest fire of all time was the one that devastated Peshtigo and other lumber towns on the banks of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, USA on October 8, 1871. Because the blaze happened on the very same night at the Great Chicago Fire, it has tended to be rather forgotten, but more than 1,150 people were killed and Peshtigo was burned to the ground. For the story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Heatwaves

At least 20 people – mainly elderly – have been killed by the heat in Australia. Victoria and South Australia had seen the thermometer rising above 40°C (104°F) for days on end, though now temperatures seem to have subsided.

It’s often forgotten that in Europe, heatwaves are probably the deadliest weather events we get. In August 2003, when the UK recorded its highest ever temperature of 38°C, it’s estimated that up to 50,000 died from the heat across the continent.

In France, where perhaps 15,000 perished, the deaths caused a political storm. Because the heatwave attacked in August, much of the country was already shut down, with doctors and government ministers off on holiday. Families were accused of abandoning elderly relatives who were only found dead alone in their apartments when neighbours noticed the smell. The director-general for health resigned, and the health minister lost his job the following year. For more, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Cheering photos....if you feel the need to be cheered up, see this photo collection:-

http://www.flickr.com/groups/globalworldawards/discuss/72157613123377117/