ONE of the problems with climate change in the United Kingdom is that most of us can’t see it. We search the world around us for possible signs, but when they come, in the form of a cluster of intense storms, we’re still not sure, because nature is so variable, or because our lives are so short and memories shorter, or perhaps because we no longer live in the landscape in which we grew up; no longer know what exactly each season should bring.
Dudley, Eunice, Franklin: all these storms have come in quick succession and only months after we saw trees flattened like wheat because of Storm Arwen and so, of course, the immediate question becomes – is this climate change? We scratch our heads and try, for comfort, to remember a time when it was like this before. The Great Storm of 1987?
It’s the same with the signs in our flora and fauna. The daffs in my backyard are, right now, in full bloom. When, back in January, they first started to swell their buds, I thought this premature. As far as I remember from previous years, these aren’t an early blooming variety. The mildness of January made me worry for them. Perhaps, confused by that warmest New Year on record, they had arrived too early?
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But I put that thought aside. It was only when a recent report by the University of Cambridge was published that I began to wonder again if my daffs are part of a pattern. Using a database of records going back to the mid-18th century, the researchers had found that climate change is causing plants in the UK to flower one month earlier. Spring, in other words, is springing back.
Of course, the only people who can paint for us a broader picture of seasonal, wildlife and weather change and what we are likely to see more of, are the scientists, and often they are non-committal – they talk in likelihoods rather than certainties.
It’s easy to tell the story of the devastation a storm causes, not so easy to tell the tale of what caused the storm itself, or if it is linked to the wider, still more complex story of climate change.
Most meteorologists and climatologists seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet on the links between Dudley, Eunice and Franklin and global heating. The widespread view is that while the strong winds are probably not attributable to climate change, the overall damage of such storms is worse because of increased rainfall and sea-level rise which are linked to the climate crisis.
Among those making this observation has been Friederike Otto of the World Weather Attribution Service who observed that: “The damages of winter storms have gotten worse because of human-caused climate change for two reasons: one, the rainfall associated with these winter storms has become more intense, and many studies link this clearly to climate change; and two, because of sea-level rise, storm surges are higher and thus more damaging than they would otherwise be.”
That said, there are other scientists, Hayley J Fowler and Colin Manning at Newcastle University, who believe strong winds are likely to increase as a result of climate change. The pair study “sting jets”, areas of very powerful wind within a storm, one of which was predicted as part of Storm Eunice. This phenomena is poorly represented in models, and they predict we will see “more intense wind storms over the UK as climate change accelerates, with much of this coming from storms that develop sting jets”.
Whatever the precise learnings from these recent storms, what’s clear is that they are a reminder of the power of the elements, and science is telling us that this power is in flux.
A study in the journal Climatic Change found that as the level of global warming rises, the projected increase in frequency or severity or both will be stronger for hot weather, droughts and flooding.
All this should be a visceral spur to change, but what’s remarkable is how little talk or urgency there is now around climate, just over 100 days after COP26.
We’re happy to talk about the damage done by storms, but not so much about the serious work of reducing emissions.
Karl Mathiesen, writing in Politico, describes the world as in the grip of a “global climate attention crisis”, distracted by Ukraine and a gas price crisis.
Even as we appear to be coming out of Covid, other crises demand our focus. Meanwhile, net zero is in the firing line from a minority of Tory politicians who want to portray it as an agenda to make people colder and poorer, rather than a key to ensuring future energy security and a liveable planet.
But the climate crisis is a storm we can’t afford to look away from.
We must face it and channel our fear into driving down greenhouse gas emissions.
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