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

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.)

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.

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/