London killer fogs

Sixty years ago this week, London was in the grip of perhaps the deadliest fog in its history.  The air was thick yellow, with sulphur dioxide levels ten times higher than usual.   Visibility was reduced to 20 yards, sometimes less.

Not surprisingly, transport came to a standstill, and the smog even got inside buildings so that a performance at Sadler’s Wells Theatre had to be abandoned because the audience couldn’t see the stage.

The foul air was estimated to have caused the deaths of up to 12,000 Londoners, and the government set up an inquiry to try and prevent anything like it happening again.    The result was the Clean Air Act of 1956, which  improved things dramatically.   

Now the Clean Air in London campaign is complaining that Mayor Boris Johnson has been quietly lobbying to dilute European rules on air standards in spite of a report in 2010 which said that 4,300 Londoners a year were still dying because of poor air quality in the capital.

*You can read more about the 1952 smog in my book London’s Disasters.  It also features the Regent’s Park skating disaster, recalled in a fascinating series on London’s lesser known disasters on the Londonist website - http://londonist.com/2012/11/londons-forgotten-disasters-ice-skating-tragedy-in-regents-park.php

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/