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Fiona fox's blog
Further commentary on the flooding situation in the UK, particularly related to climate change. All SMC output on flooding here.
Professor Nigel Arnell, Director of the Walker Institute for Climate System Research at the University of Reading, said:
“Ed Miliband’s assertion that climate change will probably bring more flooding is backed up by the scientific evidence. While we can’t say if any individual event is as a result of climate change, there is increasing evidence that Britain would most likely face heavier rainfall events as the atmosphere warms.
“The facts about global temperature increases, and its causes, are now well understood. Climate scientists are now working hard to find out how this will affect different regions, such as that of north Europe.
“Britain has a complex climate which is influenced by the ocean, Arctic ice, jet stream, and continental land masses, so unpicking exactly how our climate will develop over the coming decades is difficult. However, it is increasingly clear that relying on the historical record to estimate flood risk is likely to lead us to underestimate the dangers to which we are exposed.”
Dr Chris Huntingford, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology said:
“In terms of climate change, there is a desperate need to move away from the almost Punch-and-Judy debate of either every extreme is due to climate change, or the contrast of everything is simply natural variability.
“Desperately needed is the on-going calculation of whether higher atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are changing the chances of rainfall events, as recently witnessed, occurring.
“To work this out, weather forecast models that analyse the atmosphere in such fine detail as to model storm tracks, need to be operated for different levels of modelled carbon dioxide. Running these for hundreds of modelled years for alternative carbon dioxide concentrations, so as to build up statistical profiles of rainfall patterns, presents one of the biggest computational challenges ever tackled.”