Is the flooding related to global warming?

[superstarheartbreaker]

thoughts please?

[Jaisalmer]

Silly to isolate single events though. It is the ongoing trend globally that is so alarming and the rapidity at which this change is occurring.

[BuildUpMyFence]

What ever you want to call it, yes.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Damediazepam tell us more about that.

[BuildUpMyFence]

Wet warm weather is a breeding ground for slugs, and they are already a menace.

[LurcioLovesFrankie]

One possible driver for this winter is the quasi biennial oscillation (direction of the stratospheric winds over the equator): it is in an unusually strong westerly phase which could be driving the current positive state of the North Atlantic Oscillation. The NAO is usually measured by the pressure difference between Iceland and the Azores - basically, big pressure gradient is associated with strong jet, jet position over UK/N Europe and lots of storms tracking over the Atlantic, weak pressure gradient - the negative phase - is associated with a weak, meandering jet, blocking highs over Scandinavia and associated cold,dry weather over the UK/ N Europe, while the Atlantic depressions get deflected south into the Mediterranean.

Basically, Jan- March last year was a classic negative NAO, while this winter is a classic (albeit fairly extreme) positive NAO.

As for climate change - yes, it is real, yes, it is anthropogenic. But European weather is very complex, and overlaid with so much natural variability - the year-on-year NAO, the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation, etc., that it's very hard to attribute any individual event to climate change. However, there are likely to be more extremes in European weather - heat waves, for instance - as a result of climate change, and probably an increase in precipitation.

[DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen]

Oh you bad kitten-my friend is weather obsessed, weather stations in the garden etc, and I remember her telling me about it I glazed over after a while though I do remember history lessons about it though-many moons ago!- about how hard it was to grow anything and it was basically pissing down like it is now with mildish temperatures.

I'm sure someone will come along with a better memory than me....

[DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen]

Ooooo Julia-that's what my friend says about climate changing! I wonder if I know you

[Liara]

Yes, and also this

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I'd say I'm pretty weather obsessed too. Summers in the late Middle Ages in Europe were wetter than they are in general today. Historians know this by measuring the thickness of tree rings. You can't extrapolate that to saying it was this wet in the Middle Ages. For a start we don't know actually how much rain fell then!

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Very well articulated Lurcio. Fully agree with you.

[Dromedary]

What a load of rubbish about - there was an ice age aeons ago which wasn't caused by humans, and there's a change in the climate now, so that wasn't caused by humans either. Do you really feel ok about spouting that just so that you can pretend to justify to yourself and the next generation FFS your contribution to the problem you are leaving them with?

[LurcioLovesFrankie]

Re. frost fairs and the fact that the Thames no longer freezes over - this is more to do with man-made changes in the river flow - less bridges with very narrow spans (which restricted the flow and made it sluggish), steep embankments "canalising" the river and making it flow faster, hence it doesn't freeze any more.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Why do you think that we are not affecting the climate dromedary, is it your theory or do you have evidence to back that up?

[Dromedary]

Was I unclear OhYou? Of course I think we're affecting the climate; I was deriding those who come up with rubbish about it not having anything to do with humans. You obviously didn't read the 2nd sentence of my post.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I did read it through. To me it read the opposite of what you meant it to. I apologise for misunderstanding.

[winterhat]

Yes, man-made global warming IMO.

[TheGreatHunt]

Well David cameron blamed the flooding on labour

[scaevola]

I've seen a couple of think pieces on news channels today. The experts seem to be saying 'it might be' but would need to see more evidence of a sustained change of range rather than drawing conclusions from one exceptional season (as ordinary probability could also account for it).

That won't satisfyheadline writers though, or anyone else seeking rapid definitive answers in a set of phenomena that are actually marked by slower incremental change.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Well of course everything is Labours fault, unless its the Tories fault

[specialsubject]

our recorded history is TINY so it is hard to tell.

but poor land management means that when we get rain like this, we get problems like this.

[TheGreatHunt]

Even then the Tories would still blame labour

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Poor land management isn't helping for sure but in parts of the south of England it was the wettest January ever recorded.

[roundtable]

I don't know anything about it but remember seeing an article on the BBC about man made weather and how it flooded certain areas.

It happened a while ago now but could it still be happening?

I can't see how that wouldn't have an effect on climate change now.

I'd love to be in a position to know the real answers. There must be some people out there who know an awful lot but keep it very quiet.

might just be feeling the conspiracy theories as I've had a wine

[HesterShaw]

The Met Office have said there is no evidence that it is.

On the other hand there is no evidence that it isn't.

Also there have been years as wet as this in the past. I can't remember the date but I read an account which said Britain had water levels like this in the nineteenth century.

"Global warming" is a misnomer. It's a lot more complicated than that. Look at the East Coast of the USA - the winter they are having is playing right into the deniers' hands. Climate science is so full of tiny little variables that it is currently impossible to decide anything, it seems.

[HesterShaw]

I don't know anything about it but remember seeing an article on the BBC about man made weather and how it flooded certain areas.

Cloud seeding? There was talk that the Americans were doing this over Exmoor when the Lynmouth floods happened.