Britain faces being battered by storms well into next month. The only comfort is that the Met Office believes that a slight shift in wind direction next week will bring cooler air, which means that rainfalls will diminish. But with the ground saturated and so many rivers running high, the slightest extra rainfall could trigger flooding in more regions.
The rainfalls on Thursday were extraordinary. Seathwaite in the fells of the Lake District is known as the wettest place in Britain, but it surpassed its reputation with a deluge: 314.4mm (12.38in), a British record for any 24-hour period, beating the cloudburst of July 18, 1955, that deluged Martinstown in Dorset with 279.4mm (11.0in).
Another storm will burst over Britain this weekend, although thankfully this depression will sweep through more rapidly than Thursday’s episode, so the rain will be less heavy.
However, the Met Office predicts that Cumbria and Southwest Scotland could see rain of up to 40mm (1.6in) on higher ground today and experience severe gales reaching 50mph. Next week the weather begins a subtle change, turning from mild and very wet southwesterly winds to a more westerly airflow with cooler air. This is good news because less rain is carried in colder air, but there could be snow falling on the highest mountains of Scotland and the Pennines.
However, the problem is that the weather is stuck in a rut. The jet stream winds are running over Britain, generating and dragging storms with them. Those winds swirl around the globe like a non-stop carousel, but they have been helped into their track over Britain by a growing El Niño in the Pacific. This is a huge upheaval in the tropical waters of the Pacific, as warm waters surge towards South America. The current El Niño appeared a few months ago and was expected to be moderate in strength, but it has intensified and is growing warmer and stronger, with sea surface temperatures around 1.5C (2.7F) warmer than normal.
“El Niño has surged in the last six weeks,” said Jeff Knight, manager of the climate variability group at the Met Office Hadley Centre. “We’re getting on for a reasonably sized event, and from past observations of El Niño we know that there will be a greater chance of wetter and windier weather at this time of year in the UK.”
Does this mean that we are doomed to a relentless barrage of foul weather until Christmas and beyond? Apart from El Niño, the weather fluctuates of its own accord, so it is quite possible that the jet stream could snap out of its pattern and give us a respite.
One crucial blockage in the system is a huge anti-cyclone over the Mediterranean. If the high pressure shifted, we would be free of the storms.
Whether this is another sign of climate change is less clear. Our weather fluctuates so wildly that no single storm, or season or even year of weather proves anything.
Flood advice
• Gather essential items together either upstairs or in a high place — have torches, medicines and waterproofs to hand
• Fill jugs and saucepans with clean water
• Move your family and pets upstairs, or to a high place with a means of escape
• Turn off gas, electricity and water supplies before flood water has entered your home
• Do not touch anything electrical when standing in floodwater
For local information on the Cumbria floods visit www.newsandstar.co.uk Listen to local radio for updates or call the Environment Agency Floodline on 0845 9881188
Source: Environment Agency
timesonline.co.uk
Britain braced for storms into December
Major climate change conference in Winchester
A CONFERENCE on the challenges of climate change saw around 100 people pack the Winchester Discovery Centre yesterday and today.
The two-day event was the first of its kind in the city and saw a host of speakers debate how society can reduce carbon emissions and stave off catastrophic global heating.
Today Peter Harper, of the Centre for Alternative Technology, said very few people were fully aware of the problem while most others don't yet care.
"There are still lots of sceptics, most people are sceptical to the point of being ostriches. They don't want to know."
He said most were wedded to the pillars of bourgeois life: homes heated to 20 degrees; a car; eating meat and dairy products and a foreign holiday every year.
Even Green-minded people often leave heavy carbon footprints: living in big houses, commuting to work, visiting family, having children and pets, and getting divorced.
Yesterday Labour MP Alan Simpson said: "Human existence has never been at a more critical turning point. Saying this is not a counsel of despair.
"Never have we had so much at our fingertips that would make it possible for a genuine transformation of how societies work, living better but living differently."
Mr Simpson said the UK could learn from Germany which is hoping to meet all of its renewable energy needs by 2050.
He added: “Most energy companies hate the idea of paying citizens for ‘clean’ energy that we generate for ourselves. That is why there has been such opposition to ambitious plans to deliver 10-15 per cent of our energy from renewable sources by 2020.
“Germany already exceeds this figure and their citizens love it. By 2050 they intend to meet all their energy needs from renewable sources. The UK could do the same. Some of this could come from technologies that are 20 years old or longer.”
The event was organised by Winchester Action on Climate Change, (WinACC), the University of Southampton and Cap & Share UK.
It continues today (Nov 21) from 9am until 4.30pm at the centre on Jewry Street.
hampshirechronicle.co.uk
Obama and Jintao focus net attention on the environment
President Barack Obama's November 17 meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao ahead of December's UN Climate Change Conference drove an increased worldwide interest in environmental topics, according to the Nielsen Company's Blogpulse analysis.
Interest in the topic of 'Obama' rose by 50% between November 14 and 16, as did the buzz surrounding the word 'China'. Mentions of the word 'environment' followed the same upward motion with generated interest increasing by a third.
All three trendlines dropped off at the same time: by November 20, interest in the words 'environment' and 'China' converged, and Obama's buzz had dropped off sharply.
At that point, neither topic had fallen below their pre-November 14 levels, and interest levels regarding both UN heads of state and environmental topics are expected to climb as December 7-18's Climate Change Conference approaches.
independent.co.uk
Pupils win award for play on climate change
SCHOOL children in Bramley have won a climate change drama competition at the atomic weapons plant.
Children from five primary schools presented their own 10-minute plays about climate change in front of judges as part of an Atomic Weapons Establishment’s (AWE) Schools’ Liaison programme.
But it was a class from Bramley Primary School that won with a piece that included dance.
Jenny Rushton, Year 4 teacher at the school, in Bramley Lane, Bramley, said: “The children are beside themselves, they did fantastically well. We were delighted.
“We went on first at the William Penney Theatre. It was nail-biting!”
The event was organised in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and the other schools taking part were The Cedars School, in Aldermaston, The Priory Primary School from Tadley, North Waltham Primary School, and Southlake Primary School, in Reading.
The schools were shortlisted to a final after submitting a script in July.
Mrs Rushton said: “The whole class worked on the script and the drama together so it was everybody’s work and everybody performed.”
She added that in the play the 23 children went into the future where several species from today are extinct, and they travelled back in time to tell the present what had happened.
She said: “We focused on coral and they performed a dance to show the damage to coral, and we looked at land clearance and the effects it is having on lowland gorillas, and they did a mechanic dance for that.”
The children have won a trip to the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum in London early next year as well as a gold dodo statue, which was made at AWE.
Lindsey Appleton, chairman of AWE’s Schools Liaison scheme, said: “It was an incredibly hard decision for the judges.
“I think that it proves pupils are really aware of climate change, the impact it is having, and they want to do something about it – it’s their future.”
basingstokegazette.co.uk
Hot air on climate change
The Government needs to reclaim the terms of the debate from the sceptics.
BRITAIN'S new high commissioner, Baroness Valerie Amos, is somewhat perplexed about where she has found herself on her new posting.
Earlier this month the Baroness gave her first interview in which she politely expressed her concern about the lack of sophistication in the debate about the emissions trading scheme.
Not because Australians are not across the scheme's details but because the debate seems to have backflipped to one of whether or not climate change is even happening.
Baroness Amos told The Sydney Morning Herald she was surprised the science was being questioned.
"These are things where there have been debates over a long period of time in other countries and where we have reached conclusions and moved on."
In Britain, Tory leader David Cameron looks set to vanquish Labour in part because he has convinced people he is the person best suited to deal with global warming.
Kevin Rudd would like Australia to be out there leading the way.
He will attend the Copenhagen climate change talks next month as one of the three lead negotiators with the task of pressuring other world leaders to act.
At least Rudd won't find himself having to deal with too many climate sceptics at the meeting.
At home he is trying to negotiate an emissions trading scheme with an Opposition that is not even sure climate change exists or, if it does, who is responsible for it.
The reappearance of climate scepticism in Australia is one of the weirder things to have happened in politics this year.
Just two years ago many political observers nearly collapsed in gales of laughter as four Howard government MPs released their own report disputing global warming, which likened it to other historic claims such as the theory that Earth was the centre of the universe.
The MPs – Dennis Jensen, Danna Vale, Jackie Kelly and Dave Tollner – were dubbed the "Flat Earth Four" by one lobbyist.
Kelly and Tollner are no longer in Parliament. Vale and Jensen are. Jensen, a noted sceptic, is up to his armpits in the push within the Coalition to reject the emissions trading scheme.
He has been joined by such high-profile names as Cory Bernardi, Wilson Tuckey and pretty much any National Party senator. There will always be people who disagree with anything no matter the weight of scientific evidence.
What is particularly strange is that as the science becomes more certain, the number of climate sceptics seems to be growing.
Two years ago Rudd swept into office thanks to a campaign that focused on climate change as a point of difference between Labor and the Coalition.
The Coalition's post-election analysis suggested it lost partly because it did not address community concerns about climate change. For a while it appeared as if the Coalition would go the way of Britain's Conservative Party and plan its future electoral strategies around a more progressive agenda on a range of issues including the environment.
Malcolm Turnbull returned from Britain a few months ago convinced this was the way forward.
Instead he finds himself arguing not only against radio shock jocks such as Alan Jones about the reality of global warming but a good number of his own MPs.
Part of the reason the sceptics have gained ground is the woeful standard of debate around the emissions trading scheme. The debate has been full of technicalities and jargon, such as "rates of decay", with each point of view pushed by one of the many powerful commercial industries with a stake in the outcome.
No wonder so many people don't have a clue about the scheme.
This has created a vacuum that the sceptics have rushed to fill, leaving the Government wrong-footed in its attempt to keep the public abreast and supportive of itsplans.
Other than Rudd's brain snap earlier this month, where he accused climate sceptics of playing havoc with the lives of future generations, there has been little in the way of government communication.
If the Government fails to get the emissions trading scheme passed it will be partly due to its inability to counter the arguments of the sceptics.
smh
Jagdeo wins royal kudos for leadership in climate change fight
Britain’s Prince Charles has praised the leadership of President Bharrat Jagdeo in the climate change arena.
The Prince, at a meeting of his Rainforest Fund in London on Thursday, pointed to Jagdeo’s “incredible leadership” in combating climate change by dedicating Guyana’s entire forests to the cause. “I would particularly like to thank President Jagdeo of Guyana. He has shown incredible leadership in all this,” a press release from the Government Information Agency (GINA) quoted the Prince as saying. The Thursday meeting at the St James Palace was to discuss emergency funding to tackle tropical deforestation.
According to GINA, the meeting, a few weeks before the important 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 7 to 18, arrived at a consensus which comes in the form of an inter-governmental report produced by the Informal Working Group (IWG) of 35 countries, that was set up after the meeting of the G-20 leaders, convened by the Prince in April.
The IWG report outlines a process that would reward rainforest countries for reducing deforestation rates. Payments would be made on a performance basis, and would ensure that the forests are worth more alive than dead. The financing is aimed at encouraging rainforest countries to pursue more sustainable forms of economic development, the release noted.
It stated that Prince Charles was also high in praise for the Government of Norway with which Guyana had signed a Memorandum of Understanding on November 9 that could see this country accessing up to US$250M by 2015 in return for preserving its forests.
“We also owe an enormous amount to the Government of Norway for their remarkable leadership and also, dare I say it, for their money! I really would also like to express even more gratitude to the Norwegian government for their labour of love in providing the Secretariat for the IWG,” he was quoted as saying.
According to GINA, the Prince urged the world’s governments to deliver new public finance commitments to provide the funding that the IWG has demonstrated is necessary to reduce deforestation by 25% by 2015. “When you think that 25% in global reduction could be achieved on the basis of additional financing of €15-25B, starting at about €1B in 2010 and increasing to €5.5B per year in 2015, that isn’t much money really when you think about it and if we could achieve it, it would provide the largest reduction in emissions possible over the period…equivalent to perhaps as much as seven gigatons of carbon dioxide and that’s more than the annual emissions of China or the US,” he explained.
The Prince said that it has been inspiring to hear the private sector describe how they can play their part in bringing about a future where productivity and sustainability go hand in hand, and to hear of national plans such as Guyana’s to combat deforestation. “To hear of the government-backed initiatives already underway in Brazil and Guyana that can make this (reducing deforestation) a reality in two very different kinds of rainforest nations are two messages of precious hope,” he was quoted as saying.
GINA noted that Guyana’s Low-Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), which was launched on June 8 and has gone through a four-month, exhaustive national consultative process, is the first national plan that seeks to combat climate change by preserving forests. It has received international recognition and many renowned personalities and organizations, including the Prince, have joined the efforts.
Conservation Internation-al, movie-star Harrison Ford, the Clinton Foundation, the Governments of Norway, and Australia, whose Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had expressed his country’s interest in collaborating with Guyana in the global effort to address climate change after lauding Guyana’s leadership on climate change during a bilateral meeting with President Jagdeo in New York in September, are supporters, the release said.
It noted that Australia has committed to support Guyana’s Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) system.
Meanwhile, it was noted that at Thursday’s meeting the United States pledged US$275M to rainforest protection, which would come from US$1.2B assistance for international programmes, part of a 2010 budget currently pending US Congressional approval.
The funds would aim “to protect biodiversity and support sustainable landscapes in fiscal year 2010 … with a focus on protection of tropical forests.”
stabroeknews
UN report adds dimension of gender to climate change discussions
A new UN report has stated that women are most likely to be affected by climate change, but it stopped short of directly encouraging population control.
A report issued Thursday by the U.N. has recommended the addition of gender elements to climate change discussions.
The report, United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) 2009, claimed that women — especially those in underdeveloped nations — were most at risk to the effects of climate change. It indicated that the female agricultural work force and caretakers of the world were ill-equipped to deal with changes effectively.
“They are among the most vulnerable to climate change, partly because in many countries they make up the larger share of the agricultural work force and partly because they tend to have access to fewer income-earning opportunities,” said the authors of the report.
“Women manage households and care for family members, which often limits their mobility and increases their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters. Drought and erratic rainfall force women to work harder to secure food, water and energy for their homes.”
“Girls drop out of school to help their mothers with these tasks. This cycle of deprivation, poverty and inequality undermines the social capital needed to deal effectively with climate change.”
“Marginalization of and discrimination against women and the lack of attention to the way gender inequality hampers development, health, equity and overall human well being — all undermine countries’ resilience to climate change.”
The report added that climate change would prompt internal displacement and international migration, something that women may be heavily affected by.
However, while the report indicated that population growth has been responsible for 40 percent to 60 percent of previous emission growth, it stopped short of suggesting that direct population reduction would be needed to curb the problem. The report instead attempted to frame the issue as giving women more options and education regarding the birth control they want rather than making it a nefarious plan by first-world countries to limit how many babies women can have.
Denmark’s Minister for Development Cooperation, Ulla Tørnæs, agreed. “Denmark has for many years now been a strong advocate for a woman’s right to decide how many children she wants and when she wants them,” she told The Copenhagen Post.
“Improving women’s right to choose will be crucial in stabilizing population growth, sustaining development and reducing poverty. In my view the key is to accelerate access to modern contraception and family planning.”
The report comes a few weeks before the December 7 United Nations climate conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Officials from 192 countries hope to create a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
babychums
