By Paul Homewood
As we keep being reminded, global warming will bring wetter, wilder weather to the UK more often.
Except that the facts tell the opposite story:
Climate change?
Scientists are wary of saying climate change has caused a specific event such as Storm Ciara. And they are divided on the impact global warming could have on the jet stream, which whips up storms and drives them towards the UK.
But scientific modelling suggests stronger winds and heavier rainfall could be in store for the UK as a result of climate change. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, making heavy rain and flooding more likely in the years to come. In 2017 researchers concluded the heavy rainfall brought by Storm Desmond, which caused widespread flooding in December 2015, was made 60 per cent more likely by climate change.
Perhaps instead of playing with their silly little models, these so-called scientists might bother to check the actual data:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/download.html
Analysis of the Met Office’s England & Wales Precipitation Series shows no such trends, either in terms of frequency or severity in winter months.
As can be seen, by far the wettest day was 3rd December 1960:
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/IO_95067ea8-24bf-42f4-bae7-7a5953abc79b/
S Wales was particularly badly affected by floods, but the south and midlands of England were also hit.
Winds reached 68Kts (78mph) on the south coast during that storm, and gales were a common occurrence throughout the month.
December 1960 was not a one-off, four of the six heaviest rains occurred between 1960 and 1979.
In the last ten years, there have been eight days with >15mm of rainfall, below the series average of 1.03 a year.
As for wild weather, even the Met Office have had to admit that they can find no trends over the last five decades. Indeed, their graph clearly shows a decline in storminess since the 1990s:
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/joc.6213
But where climate science is concerned, models always trump facts!
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For perspective, when the S Yorkshire floods hit last November, the average rainfall over England & Wales was 12.19mm on Nov 6th and 5.42mm on the 7th when Sheffield had its heavy rainfall.
The reason the national total was relatively low was because the really heavy rain got stock over the Midlands.
The rainfall during Storm Desmond in December 2015 was even more tightly focussed over a tiny area. Over England & Wales, the rainfall totalled just 4.66mm on the 5th, when most of the rain dropped on Cumbria.
These examples perhaps offer an insight into just how severe the rainfall was in December 1960.
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February 15, 2020 at 11:39AM
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