Climate change to lash Britain with tropical storms

Jonathan Leake Environment Editor

BRITAIN should brace itself for more tropical-style deluges of the kind that wreaked havoc on Cockermouth, according to climate experts.
They warn that, although no single event can be attributed to climate change, the warming of the atmosphere caused by greenhouse gases means such disasters will become more frequent.
“We need to follow the example of tropical cities like Kuala Lumpur and Singapore where flooding is a regular event,” said Roger Falconer, professor of water management at Cardiff University.
“They have huge flood drains and roads, all designed to channel water away from danger areas. Britain must learn to think the same way.”

Such warnings are in line with recent studies into how Britain’s climate may change. They suggest summers will become drier and warmer, but winters will be marked by storms, strong winds and more deluges.
Some fear that is already happening. From the 1960s until the 1990s, floods were a rarity in Britain. It meant that when floods struck across the Midlands in 1998, the country was unprepared.
A subsequent government inquiry led by Peter Bye criticised the Environment Agency, then just two years old, and called on it to set up an early warning system.
That system was tested to the limit when floods struck again in 2000, hitting communities stretching from Sussex to Wales.
A further inquiry found that many of the flooded areas were linked to uncontrolled development on flood plains. That led to new planning controls.
There were more hard lessons in January 2005 when Carlisle was devastated by floods that killed three people and forced thousands from their homes.
That was followed by the 2007 floods that hit Tewkesbury, Hull and Doncaster, this time threatening power stations, water supplies and telecommunications.
What the 2005 and 2007 floods also showed was the human cost, with many Carlisle and Hull residents forced to leave their homes for months. Around Britain, some 5m people live in flood-prone areas.
What lies behind the spate of floods? Edmund Penning-Rowsell, professor of geography and director of Middlesex University’s flood hazard research centre, said it was clear that floods were getting more frequent.
He said: “The country has been through wet periods like this before so we still cannot be sure it is climate change, but it fits with the projections and we should expect it to continue.”
Dave Britton, a spokesman for the Met Office, said: “In the UK the projections do suggest this will happen more often. When the atmosphere is warmer it can evaporate more water from the sea and it can hold more moisture. The result is storms and heavy rainfall.”
Part of the answer could lie in huge civil engineering projects. The Royal Academy of Engineering held a conference on “extreme flooding” earlier this month at which it discussed ideas such as building huge storm drains under roads.
Others believe the scale of such events is so huge that Britain must rethink its entire attitude. That means accepting that some flooding is inevitable and putting more effort into educating people living in risk areas.
Cockermouth illustrates the point, with the Environment Agency spending £600,000 on new defences in 1999 and another £100,000 after floods in 2005. These defences were swamped last week.
Phil Rothwell, head of flood strategy at the Environment Agency, said the average cost of refurbishing a house after a flood was £28,000.
He said: “If climate predictions are right, we are going to have more of these heavy rainfall events inundating more areas. As a nation we have to get used to that and manage things differently.
“The future is not about hard engineering. We can’t stop these kinds of floods and, in any case, the nation doesn’t want us to turn its rivers into canals hidden behind huge embankments.”
The Cockermouth floods coincide with some major developments in flood planning. Next month sees the implementation of the EU floods directive which obliges all member countries to prepare for the growing flood risk associated with climate change.
In Britain, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is trying to push the Flood and Water Management Bill through parliament before the next election.
The bill is based on Sir Michael Pitt’s review of the 2007 floods and obliges local authorities to deal with local flood risks, while putting the Environment Agency in charge of national strategy.
The Cumbrian floods could give that bill added impetus. Nick Herbert, the Conservative shadow environment secretary, this weekend said he would support government efforts to pass it into law before next May.
For the people of Cockermouth such measures will, however, seem largely irrelevant as they try to rebuild their lives and homes after the recent destruction.