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

Naming of storms

At least two people have now been killed by Storm Desmond. A 90 year old man was blown into the side of a moving bus in London, and another elderly man was swept into a river in Cumbria. Before Desmond, we were buffeted by Abigail, Barney and Clodagh

Until the last few months, only the very biggest storms got names in the UK - and those were unofficial ones, like the Great Storms of  1703 and 1987, the Burns' Day Storm of 1990, and the St Jude's Storm of 2013. Now, though, the Met Office has adopted the practice that forecasters in other countries have followed with major storms, and started giving them consecutive alphabetical names.

In the old days  in the West Indies, storms would be named after the saint's day on which they appeared. Then in the 19th century, an Australian meteorologist started calling them after politicians he disliked. Next the authorities tried numbers, but this proved too confusing when there was more than one blowing.

During World War Two, clarity was essential, so US meteorologists went back to names - often those of a wife or girlfriend. Then in 1953, the US National Weather Service drew up an official slate of female names, which continued until the late 1970s when feminist groups protested, and the authorities agreed to alternate male and female names. 

Forgotten cyclone hits Africa

While the eyes of the world have been on Typhoon Haiyan as it devastated the Philippines (see my blog of 12 Nov), a cyclone has killed at least 140 people in the Somali region of Puntland. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and livestock has perished by the thousand.

The authorities say many people are still missing, and fear the death toll could reach 300. Heavy flooding has made many of the region’s dirt roads impassable, making it hard to get supplies to stricken communities.

Makeshift shelters have been built to accommodate people driven from their homes, while the government has appealed to international aid agencies to help. The Somali government has pledged $1 million.

Puntland declared itself an autonomous state in 1998 in an attempt to escape the clan warfare that has disfigured so much of Somalia, but the region has not escaped armed conflict and has been used by pirates as a base for attacks on international shipping.

·        * Another Spanish review of my book Historia mundial de los desastres http://lecturaserrantes.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Withington%20%C2%B7John