select search filters
briefings
roundups & rapid reactions
Fiona fox's blog
The UK has been experiencing high levels of rainfall in late November 2012, leading to local flooding across the country.
Hamish Hall, Director at engineering consultancy WSP, said:
“Flooding is an ever present threat to our homes and communities and 2012 is proving to be a very bad year, highlighting the need for changes in how we collectively deal with the impacts. Although Government has made efforts to make funding more flexible by enabling private contributions, with flood risk set to increase and a double dip recession threatening we can’t rely on raising private equity to deliver schemes. Public funding is still crucial and flood budgets should reflect that.
“In the future communities will need to play a greater part in both understanding and managing their own risks. This will require more support from bodies such as the Environment Agency and local authorities, but also a willingness from at risk communities to become more involved. We must also recognise that we can’t continue to defend at all costs; we will need to adapt to the risks and where that this is not possible consider more drastic measures such as moving communities or investing in flood-resilient infrastructure and accept the consequence of flooding. Professionals who deal with flooding will have to seek more innovative approaches to forecasting events and their impacts, how people respond to flooding and how we plan future development. ”
“The very fabric of our future society is based on the understanding that the houses we live in have a lasting value. The potential that our houses can lose much of that value or even become impossible to sell due to the lack of insurance cover could very well spark a rip-tide of negative equity in the mortgages sector. We need a clear strategy to ensure that properties can get insurance in the future with the utmost urgency.”
Dr Tim Evans, independent environmental consultant, said:
“The consequence of climate change is generally predicted to be more frequent intense weather events (flood, drought, heat), and even those who don’t accept it is anthropogenic must surely accept that this is what we are experiencing.
“We need a better understanding of climate change and we need mitigation; but no less importantly we need adaptation and we need to be doing it now.
“We know that ‘urban creep’, i.e. increasing replacement of soft surface with hard surface, increases the rapidity of runoff, which in turn overloads the underground drainage infrastructure. To halt and reverse this trend we need to increase the rate of retrofitting disconnecting rainwater from sewers and slowing runoff. Cities around the world have shown the way.
“Living roofs, raingardens, kerbside planting, etc. that absorb water or at least slow runoff, take the pressure off the urban drainage infrastructure. The ‘green infrastructure’ for rainwater also reduces urban heat island effect, absorbs vehicle emission [and other air] pollutants and generally improves liveability and biodiversity. Our cities have many street trees but few of them have hydraulic connection with the street surfaces, most could all be raingardens. The only lack of space for green infrastructure is between people’s ears. Some of this water will recharge the groundwater under urban areas, which increases water resource in times of drought.
“An issue is that the work is spread across different budgets (highways, water, parks, amenity, planning, …). We need vision, direction and leadership. That is what exemplars such as Portland, Philadelphia, Gothenburg and even Welsh Water show. The UK is not inactive but it is not doing enough. Defra is still prevaricating about the date when the remaining sections of the Flood and Water Act are to be implemented, will it be April 2014?
“Stormwater tunnels, super sewers, interceptors, call them what you want, might be part of the mix but they are end of pipe, they won’t stop property flooding because of overflowing sewers upstream. They won’t stop the underground trains flooding. They are useless when they are full so it is essential they are pumped out quickly, which means massive pumps, and more climate change emissions. Reducing the runoff by green infrastructure will reduce the size needed for the tunnels and the number of times they will be used.
“Green infrastructure is lots of smallish projects that added together have huge effect. It takes time so we need to start now. There is no more time to faff about with delays and indecision.”
Dr David Lavers, University of Reading, said:
“Over the last several days the jet stream, a ribbon of fast moving air around 8-10 km up in the atmosphere, has been located further south than normal and has brought a series of storms to the British Isles. The weekend saw a long-lasting low pressure system over the UK.
“Flood-generating rainfall in the UK has been linked by scientists at the University of Reading to ‘Atmospheric Rivers’, narrow bands of atmospheric moisture, thousands of kilometres long, that are transported by the wind. The recent succession of storms has transported moisture from the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean towards the UK, some in the form of atmospheric rivers, and this has fuelled large rainfall totals and widespread flooding.”
Professor Nigel Arnell, Walker Institute, University of Reading said:
“The floods this week have been caused not only by the heavy rain of the last few days, but also by the large amounts of rain that fell over the summer and autumn. Soils have been saturated now for a few weeks in many areas and any extra rain is likely to trigger flooding.
“There is a clear trend in the UK towards more heavy precipitation events over the last 50 years (in fact this trend is common over many areas of the world). This is consistent with what we would expect in a warming world and is consistent with what climate models predict for the future. Climate models also predict that UK winters may become wetter, leading to more prolonged periods of saturated soils, and increasing still further the risks of flooding. For example, the sort of wet winters we currently see over Northern Europe just once every 20 years could happen almost every other year by the end of the century.
“There’s also growing evidence that human induced climate change is already increasing the chances of UK floods and other extreme event. For example, studies have shown that human induced climate change made the devastating floods of autumn 2000, the wettest autumn on record in England and Wales, between two and three times more likely to happen.
“When you look back at seasonal rainfall for the UK over the last 100 years, there is some suggestion of an increase in winter rainfall and a decrease in summer rainfall, but there is also a lot of year to year and decade to decade variability. The last few summers have been wet over the UK. Whether this is an indication of how climate change might affect summer rainfall is too early to say, but it does emphasise the volatility of our climate.
“It is hard to study trends in floods themselves as they are affected by a whole range of factors, not just the amount of rain that falls: for example, changes to flood defences and changes in the amount of impermeable land surface can all affect floods and their impacts.
“The wettest year on record for England and Wales is 1872 with 1284.9 mm of rain; currently 2012 has had 931.4 mm (source: UK Met Office England and Wales rainfall series which began in 1766).”
Dr Dave Reay, senior lecturer in carbon management and climate change at the University of Edinburgh, said:
“What’s really worrying when you see the floods this week is the projected impact of climate change on UK rainfall. We can expect even wetter winters and more intense downpours over the coming years, putting an ever greater number of homes and businesses at risk.”
Prof Andrew Watkinson, Living With Environmental Change Director and Professorial Fellow, University of East Anglia, said:
“An increase in flooding poses a major threat to the UK in a changing climate. The flooding events we have recently seen show how many parts of the country are vulnerable and how much work needs to be done to increase our resilience to flooding.”