Benn warns on climate challenge

By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
Published: June 18 2009 23:00

Britain faces a century of sweltering summers, with more extremes of both flooding and drought, according to the latest assessment of the impact of global warming on the UK climate. Sea level is likely to rise by 36cm by 2080 – with an outside chance of a 1-metre rise.
“The real message of these projections is that we have got to respond, we’ve got to act,” Hilary Benn, environment secretary, said on Thursday. “Climate change is the greatest challenge that we face as a world.”

The study, carried out by the Meteorological Office, is a much more elaborate and detailed reworking of the UK Climate Impact Projections originally published in 2002. It uses the latest scientific models to produce what the Met Office calls “the most comprehensive set of probabilistic climate projections at the regional scale compiled anywhere in the world”.
The conclusions are broadly consistent with those reached seven years ago, though the projected temperature changes are more alarming and the rainfall changes less so. While southern England is likely to have 20 per cent less summer rainfall in the 2080s than today, the risk of a severe decline leading to desert-like conditions is less than previously estimated.
But average summer temperatures are projected to rise by 1.6ºC during the 2020s and about 4ºC in the 2080s. The build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has already taken place through human activities means that summers will be at least 2ºC hotter in the 2040s, whatever international agreements are reached to cut future emissions.
“We now know that some further climate change over the next two to three decades is already unavoidable,” said John Beddington, the government chief scientist. “But what the projections also show is that strong mitigation action now can start to make a real difference by 2050 and lead to very different climate outcomes by the 2080s.”
In a business-as-usual high-emissions scenario, peak summer temperatures in the south-east could be 12ºC above today’s, with summer highs in London regularly exceeding 40ºC. That is 2ºC above the record UK temperature, recorded in Gravesend during the heatwave of August 2003.
Winter rainfall is projected to rise by 10-20 per cent over most of the country by the 2080s. And the number of intense rainstorms will increase throughout the year, leading to a greater risk of flooding.
The report drew strong support from all sides of the political spectrum and from environmental campaigners. “This extremely valuable report is an important wake-up call on the need for urgent action to slash emissions,” said Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009