To ask what is up with all these storms? Is it climate change or something?

[Blueexpress]

The weather seems to be getting extreme. Storm after storm.

Always been storms

It feels like two separate conversations are taking place. Storms do happen, yes and we've always had fierce storms periodically. What cannot be argued with is that climate change is causing extreme weather to become more frequent.

@Iflyaway

1987 was a huge storm in England.

Yep the roof of my high school blew off 😳

There is a certain amount of hubris at play to suggest that we five minute evolutionary blippers on the planet are wholly responsible for its demise or survival. Nature's gonna do what nature's gonna do, and our best bet is to do the best we can to live harmoniously with it.

It is beyond depressing to see people still peddling this shit. It's the equivalent of proclaiming thunder is god getting angry, or that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and shows a shocking level of ignorance on your behalf.

We "five minute evolutionary blippers" have disrupted Earth's natural carbon cycle more severely than some of the most cataclysmic events in Earth's history including the Chicxulub impact event that spurred in the last mass extinction, and the Toba super eruption that is theorised to have reduced the human population to a few thousand people.

As things stand today, the total amount of carbon emissons being released into the atmosphere every year by burning fossil fuels outweighs the cumulative amount of CO2 released by every volcano on Earth, by at least 80 times! We can and are having a huge impact on the planet. But you are right in the sense that nature will recover, whether we will be able to survive on the planet once it does is less likely.

What happened yesterday wasn't "extreme". "Extreme" is mudslides in Brazil and floods in Bangladesh causing entire towns to slide under the river. Yesterday was a storm.

There were more storms in in the UK during the decade 1987-1997 than during the century before or the decades since. They weren't caused by climate change either, just slight changes to the jet stream.

I remember before lockdown. So this time 2 years ago. All we were whinging a out was storm after storm after storm every weekend it felt like. Then lockdown hit in the march and by the end of march all the storm stopped. Everyone seemed to think it was a result of people staying indoors.
Nope.
It's just winter. Happens every year its just easily forgettable unless you have something to specifically remember it by.
By April it will either be snowing or a heatwave. No in-between. Happens every single year.

Yes.

@yupyupyup

I am wondering the same, OP. I keep hearing that it's just Britain and its winter, but I am 35 and I have never known anything like this. My fence has come down, neighbours' tiles coming off roofs, enormous numbers of trees down across the country. It definitely isn't normal. IMO, it's climate change and there is a large proportion of the UK in denial!

Well I'm 32 and live in Scotland and I remember plenty of weather like this.

@HoliHormonalTigerlilly

There are a lot more extreme events globally. Scientists are telling us this. We are not listening. Have you watched Don't Look Up op?

Don't look up was about a comet hitting earth.

@thatsplentyjack Don't Look Up is an intentional allegory of the climate crisis.

Ah, I see covid is definitely over now - were back to discussing climate change again after it barely being mentioned in the media for the last 2 years!

No one is questioning what's happening to all the masks/lft tests/hand sanitiser being washed into the seas etc though!

I grew up on the North Wales coast in the 60s/70s and can remember the wind being so strong that you could barely stand up when walking to school and the waves regularly lashed over the promenade and main coast road.
I agree with those who say that now we give the storms names and let the media loose with the story it all seems so much worse.

I live in the Midlands now and Storm Arwen was far worse than Eunice.

“March winds and April showers”… there were always winds at the tail end of winter, some gale force, some lifting tiles off roofs.

I wonder if it seems worse now because population is higher - much higher - and we all have to move around on a daily basis a lot more. I agree naming them brings it on more too. All the same, it seems weather patterns are changing - I read this ( www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60348947 ) about the number of trees being brought down, and how the woodlands are not rooted or shaped well to withstand winds from unusual directions. Multiple factors in play, op, as usual.

@Balcmange

What happened yesterday wasn't "extreme". "Extreme" is mudslides in Brazil and floods in Bangladesh causing entire towns to slide under the river. Yesterday was a storm.

There were more storms in in the UK during the decade 1987-1997 than during the century before or the decades since. They weren't caused by climate change either, just slight changes to the jet stream.

Climate change changes the jet stream. Climate change will actually shut down the jet stream, paradoxically making Europe colder.

The UK is a tiny island on a vast globe. Those severe storms just happened to line up with us. They happen all the time everywhere else.

@SelkieQualia yes that's what the modelling shows. But that wasn't what was going on in 87-97, it was just wee shifts that (eventually) shifted back. There are some countries that have experienced extreme weather - large loss of life/land/large scale changes to land - that are likely due to bigger human mediated shifts in climate. But the UK hasn't, as yet. A storm isn't extreme weather.

We are better informed, More people stayed at home this time. Imagine how much worse it would have been if we'd all gone out/to work etc.

I agree, what she said wasn't obtuse at all.

There was a big storm 25 January 1990. I got married the next day. The electricity was off, I had a bath the night before in 2 inches of water heated in saucepans on the gas stove, did my hair by candlelight.

I had one photo with my parents before I went into the Registry Office and I was blown about and bloody froze. After the ceremony my Dad sat in his car so no photos of him and me. The honeymoon night at a local beachside hotel was by candlelight which was quite romantic but my new husband was miffed because he couldn't watch the big tv in our room. After breakfast we got in the car and drive home.

The rest of the marriage, 13 years, wasn't special either.

I'm 66 and they seem to be getting more frequent to me. Not just storms, either, but flooding too, although I realise that flooding is more likely when more and more land is built on.

@TroysMammy

There was a big storm 25 January 1990. I got married the next day. The electricity was off, I had a bath the night before in 2 inches of water heated in saucepans on the gas stove, did my hair by candlelight.

I had one photo with my parents before I went into the Registry Office and I was blown about and bloody froze. After the ceremony my Dad sat in his car so no photos of him and me. The honeymoon night at a local beachside hotel was by candlelight which was quite romantic but my new husband was miffed because he couldn't watch the big tv in our room. After breakfast we got in the car and drive home.

The rest of the marriage, 13 years, wasn't special either.

I remember that. I had to give my boss a lift home from work, because the trains had stopped running, and a tree fell on my friend's car and wrote it off. (It was parked and she wasn't in it, thankfully.)

Those so certain about storms and climate change,the UK Met Office doesn't agree with you

"Little evidence exists linking storms and climate change

The UK State of the Climate report states that there are no compelling trends in storminess when considering maximum gust speeds over the last four decades. More comprehensive studies across the North Atlantic region have reached similar conclusions.

Due to the lack of any observed trends, there haven’t been any studies so far which provide a link between changes in UK storminess and climate change.

For example, the all-time record number of storms over the British Isles in winter 2013/14 couldn’t be linked to human-induced warming."

That's what the experts say, anyway.

@HoliHormonalTigerlilly, maybe London hasn’t been in the red zone before, but perhaps we didn’t have ‘zones’ then? We’re in SW London and I remember the 1987 storm very well - it was a lot worse than Eunice - big trees down everywhere, the nearby main road blocked. We woke to the sound of chainsaws trying to clear some of it.

I did go out when Eunice was at its height - there was a lot of smaller debris on the main road and one lane partially blocked, but nothing like 1987.

1987 wasn’t forecast like these latest storms were - the technology is obviously much more advanced now. In fact a chief forecaster became notorious for having told the nation the night before that a ‘hurricane’ - or really major storm - wasn’t going to happen.

@TroysMammy lol. I don't remember that particular night (no reason to : I wasn't getting married) but I do remember walking home with friends from a club in the 90s with bins and bits of trees blowing around (didn't stop us going clubbing though haha), we had a conversation that it seemed to be more windy in general and that while there had been a lot of talk about the 1987 storm no one was saying much about storms we were having now.

Turns out we were right - it was more windy/stormy around that time, and relatively unusual, but it wasn't anything to worry about climate-wise.

Yes. Climate change includes more extreme and more frequently extreme weather.
Climate scientists have been saying this for over 50 years.

There are many factors involved and very little is being done about any of it.