By Paul Homewood
The December floods in England have been a big story recently, and, of course, still remain a problem. The term “extreme weather” has been bandied about, along with the inevitable connotation of “climate change”. ( I may be wrong, but years ago we rarely seemed to hear this term – it was usually just called “bad weather”, or simply referred to as “wet”, “stormy”, “cold” etc).
Nobody, of course, actually quantifies any of this, but the inference is made nevertheless. A good example came in the Telegraph, in an otherwise sensible article by William Langley:
Earlier this year, the Government agreed a deal with insurers that would nominally protect 500,000 households in areas deemed to be at such high risk their owners are unable to get cover. The £180 million raised each year — which would be managed by a not-for-profit fund known as Flood Re — ensures properties remain insurable through a £10.50-a-year levy on all residential premiums due to be introduced in 2015.
But critics say the scheme allows for no increase in the likely numbers of flood victims as weather patterns become increasingly severe and new homes are built in areas previously considered off limits because of flood risk.
So what exactly are the facts? How unusual has the recent rainfall been, and is there a trend to heavier rainfall? 
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/anomacts
Scotland has certainly been very wet in December, but I want to concentrate on England, as this is where most of the media attention, and, it seems, damage has been.
First we’ll look at England as a whole, then concentrate on the South East, where the real problems have been.
England
Figure 1
Figure 1 shows December precipitation, using the Met Office data. For the country as a whole, last month was only the 20th wettest since 1910, certainly nothing out of the ordinary. The wettest month was in 1914, when 179mm fell, compared with 116mm this time. Bear in mind as well, that this is just one month of the year – there will be plenty of Januaries, Februaries and so on that were wetter.
Neither does there appear to be any evidence of wetter months becoming more common.
The flooding problems have been very much the result of a build up of water, rather than flash floods, with saturated ground and full rivers. So was December the culmination of months of wet weather. We can check this by going back to October. (November and September were both dry months, so we are taking the worst case scenario here).
Figure 2
For the three months as a whole, 2013 ranks as still only 14th wettest, again nothing remarkable, and 29% lower than the record total set in 1929.
Again, it must be borne in mind that there all sorts of other permutations of months, for instance November to January, that will give totals higher than this particular period.
South East
Now let’s focus on the South East. The Met Office keep regional data for “England South East & Central South”, which closely fits the area of heavy rainfall, on the map above.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasets
Figures 3 and 4 show the precipitation for this region.
Figure 3
Figure 4
For December, 2013 ranks as 7th wettest on record, although it is notable that all the other wetter years were prior to 1959. For the three months total, the rank is 6th.
So, there is no indication, even in this part of the country, that rainfall last month, or since October, has been anything not experienced regularly in the past.
Winter Precipitation Trends
Is there any trend towards higher winter rainfall in England. To check this we have the benefit of the long term England & Wales Precipitation Series, held by the Met Office, which dates back to 1766.
There is clear evidence that winter precipitation was consistently lower in the first part of the record, up to about 1860. But since then, and certainly over the last century, the long term trend is pretty flat, with, if anything, a trend to less rain over the last decade or so.
Figure 5
The Met Office figures for England only, (a different dataset to the one above), show a similar picture.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/actualmonthly
Figure 6
Final Thoughts
The wet weather has continued into January so far, and hopefully will abate soon. We will get a better picture when we can look at the full winter period.
Nevertheless, there is nothing in the data to provide the slightest bit of evidence that the floods have been the result of, or aggravated by, “climate change”. Nor is there any indication that such events are becoming more common, or more extreme.
Only today, Bishop Hill refers to two separate comments by Sirs John Beddington and David King, respectively current and former UK Govt Chief Scientists, both of which imply that recent events are examples of extreme weather, which is increasing because of “climate change”. Naturally, they offer not the slightest bit of evidence. This did not prevent the BBC and Guardian respectively from falling for it hook, line and sinker.
I will leave the last word to Mary Dhonau, of the Flood Protection Association, an industry body. In a another Telegraph article, she warns us that “flooding is being made worse by developers building on flood plains to cater for an expanding population. She says that more than 2,000 properties were approved on flood plains this year despite official objections, and added: “It is absolutely barking mad to build on a flood plain when there are so many other places that could be built on.”
Precisely!
References
1) Met Office regional data
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/summaries/datasets
2) England & Wales Precipitation series
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/
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Appreciate your tremendously poignant analysis William Astley.
A timely posting; it’s very interesting and refreshing to see a factual analysis.
Here’s a recent newspaper letter echoing some of the points made – it’s from reader Derek Bradford in the Sunday Telegraph on December 29th 2013 (page 27):
‘Sir: I spent 40 years as a chartered civil engineer with the river authorities, surveying river channels and sea defences and designing and constructing improvements.
Most of the workers on these projects were villagers who knew every twist and turn of the rivers in their area. The first task in the spring was to cut all new weed growth from banks and watercourses, eliminating anything that could cause obstruction to flows. Patrol and maintenance of banks was constant throughout the year. When flooding was likely, men would be on patrol night and day.
But in the eighties, the government destroyed the river authorities, handing over their functions largely to the Environment Agency. Since then I have seen vital channels with trees growing in the middle, islands built in water courses, and last year, hundreds of unwanted Christmas trees tipped into channels to encourage wildlife.’
If you are going to build on a flood plain then build FOR a flood plain PHOTO GALLERY
Good grief, it is not like we don’t have the ability.
This December and early January has certainly been a break from the bitterly cold winters the UK has had the last 5 years. It seems to me that the last half decade, if anything, resembles, the years of the early 12th Century. Instead of the storms coming in the spring and summer they’ve come in the autumn-winter. And in the 12th Century, the winters steadily became colder.
In answer to the question…….No!
@ur momisugly Jim
“Al Sharpton is a seriously committed man!”
Well if he isn’t yet committed, he bloody well ought to be, over here in the PDREU-UK he would be sectioned under the Mental Health Act!
milwaukeebob says: @ur momisugly January 7, 2014 at 8:04 am
as Col. Mosby indirectly wonders previously, are there no limits on how stupid people can be? Apparently, not on the Weather Channel. Maybe they should change the name to the “Climate (Change) Channel”?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Better yet “Climate (Change the) Channel”
@Col Mosby
” If everyone agrees that there has been no climate cange for te past 17 years, then exactly how can anyone with half a brain claim that certainconditions that showed up in the past couple of years can have anything to do with cimate change?”
Evidently you missed Sir John Beddington on the Today Show a couple of days ago explaining calmly and clearly that climate change takes 20 years to manifest itself. He chose his words carefully but his message was that the current spell of bad weather is due to the CO2 we emitted in 1992. According to him it has just been waiting patiently to burst forth now.
I laughed out loud.
These unfounded statements of increasing “extreme weather” are not entirely inconsistent with more drought. Whatever the weather or climate it’s man’s co2 wot done it.
M. Courtney
I thought the problems were worse in the South West; Dorset, Somerset and round here in Gloucestershire.
Kent and Surrey have been badly affected as well, and for them it is probably more unusual. Certainly the rainfall anomalies are greater there.
Gloucestershire, particularly, suffers regularly because of all the rain coming down the Severn from the Welsh mountains.
BTW – December rainfall for Wales ranks 20th and the Midlands 33rd. For SW England/S Wales it ranks 19th.(Not available separately)
Oldseadog says:
January 7, 2014 at 8:36 am
“How long ago was it that SE England was in the grip of a serous water shortage?
Memory loss must be a requirement these days if you want to be a MSM news reporter.”
I think the requirement is much stiffer than that; you have to be brain dead.
building flood plain talk really makes me think of New Orleans.
Thanks for the question – I was about to ask the same. Kudos to M Courtney for your excellent response. It is this historical perspective which time and again casts the warmists’ propaganda in the proper light.
I was a Parish councillor for a while when I lived in the UK
The excess flooding was caused by 4 factors:-
1. Some very strange, and some would say suspiciously inadequate, planning decisions RE siting of homes and drainage.
2. Concreting over hillsides – its not enough to avoid building on floodplains, you’ve also got to consider what happens to the runoff water from your new housing development. Putting a housing development on a hill is often bad news for whoever lives in the valley, because concrete and tarmac doesn’t absorb rain, and in overcrowded England, there’s a lot of concrete and tarmac in new housing estates.
3. A bizarre European Union directive that farmers have to plough their fields with the slope of the hill, rather than across it. We never got a straight answer as to why this was the case – our assumption was some Eurocrat thought that water was a precious resource, and ploughing in such a way as to enhance runoff would improve capture in reservoirs. But this as you can imagine was bad news for people living in hilly, semi rural areas, or cities surrounded by hills.
When the EU makes a bad decision, there is no democratic means of having it reversed. The UK’s representation in the EU cannot source new legislation, it is a rubber stamp for the unelected
politburoEuropean Commission, which is the only body in the EU with the competence of introducing new legislation.4. Poor maintenance of waterways. In the last few decades, for whatever reason, Britain has had it easy RE rain and flooding, so many waterways are choked with weeds. In one bad case of flooding I knew of, the flood occurred because nobody could find the keys to the sluice gate, and the local laird was happy to sacrifice the homes of commoners to preserve his canal boating pleasure – breaking the sluice gate would have drained the local canals, which was far more of a tragedy than the flooding out of a few working class people.
The first English sentence I have learnt was “It is raining.” Life is ruthless, the English have weather talk, Italians bel canto. Guess which country is warmer.
Carbon500
A timely posting; it’s very interesting and refreshing to see a factual analysis.
Here’s a recent newspaper letter echoing some of the points made – it’s from reader Derek Bradford in the Sunday Telegraph on December 29th 2013 (page 27):
‘Sir: I spent 40 years as a chartered civil engineer with the river authorities, surveying river channels and sea defences and designing and constructing improvements.
Most of the workers on these projects were villagers who knew every twist and turn of the rivers in their area. The first task in the spring was to cut all new weed growth from banks and watercourses, eliminating anything that could cause obstruction to flows. Patrol and maintenance of banks was constant throughout the year. When flooding was likely, men would be on patrol night and day.
But in the eighties, the government destroyed the river authorities, handing over their functions largely to the Environment Agency. Since then I have seen vital channels with trees growing in the middle, islands built in water courses, and last year, hundreds of unwanted Christmas trees tipped into channels to encourage wildlife.’
Thanks for this. I read the letter, and was trying to find it again!
I think it sums up so much of what is going wrong. In the old days, you had people on the ground with local, practical knowledge, who knew what they were doing.
Now, you have a centralised, bureacratic structure, that seems to think its role is fulfilling EU and Government diktats. The poor guys at the bottom of the chain, who still have to get their hands dirty, must be pulling their hair out.
It’s not just about climate/weather…
climatereason (January 7, 2014 at 7:19 am) and Alan the Brit (January 7, 2014 at 7:29 am) are spot on but they don’t go far enough in my opinion.
The problem is not just ‘Climate Change’, it is also ‘Population Change’ or ‘Infrastructure Change’…
UK Pop 1913 = 41 million
UK Pop 2013 = 63 million
That is an increase of over 50% in a hundred years (and the rate is increasing).
This leads to perceived ‘Environmental Change’, as reported by agenda-driven media, in that slightly low rainfall in the summer will lead to hyped media stories of ‘extreme drought’ whereas slightly high rainfall in the winter will lead to hyped media stories of ‘extreme flooding’. Why? In the summer there are 22 million more people washing cars (not many in 1913), watering gardens, draining inadequate reservoirs (which were maybe just adequate when they were formed)… hence ‘drought’. In the winter, poor infrastructure planning and investment has led to inappropriate housing being built, 22 million more people likely to make an insurance claim, non-existent dredging of watercourses, 20 year-old reporters stating “It’s the worse I’ve ever seen!”, etc etc.
When the BBC and other media heavyweights are allowed to report the ‘Effect’ being extreme, rather than the ‘Climate’ being extreme, then of course the wrong emphasis will be inferred by Joe Public. Newspaper editors just want to sell newspapers. TV news channels just want people to watch!
Objective facts have little to do with this. The media war might be slowly changing, but it will be a long hard slog…
Muchelney in Somerset is cut off by flood. It’s Anglo Saxon name translates to increasingly great island.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-20614980
I seem to remember the UK Met predicted a mild & dry winter this year, but I have no URL for that. There is a link between these storms and the cold USA weather, because the storms are staying south of the Arctic circle and so the polar region has heen dry with barometric highs, so steady cold there which is steadily bleeding into the American continent as seen on DMI.
ITV News gave a fairly balanced explanation of the weather pattens last night – 6th Jan. Pointing ou the unusual arrangement of wind ptterns and temperature differences and pointing out the extreme cold in gthe USA
More pictures specifically of Tewkesbury:
http://www.gloucestershireecho.co.uk/Pictures-Flooding-Tewkesbury/story-20372791-detail/story.html
NZ Willy on 29th November the met Office said in
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/get-ready-for-winter/blog?blogid=8779
“However, our 30-day outlook provides a look ahead to the general type of weather we’re likely to see in the UK.
Currently it says that after today, we’ll see settled weather and fairly normal temperatures into the first of December before the chance of some colder, more changeable weather towards the end of next week. This may last a few days before giving way to milder and unsettled weather.
For the mid to latter part December, there are indications that temperatures are likely to remain near or slightly below average for the time of year, but otherwise fairly normal conditions for early winter are most likely.”
No mention of rain, gales, floods, just “fairly normal conditions for early winter are most likely”.
The problem is their computer isn’t big enough, or maybe there models can’t handle a non-linear, chaotic system after more than a few days. I blame chaos and the words of snake oil salesmen.
M Courtney says:
January 7, 2014 at 6:45 am
First we’ll look at England as a whole, then concentrate on the South East, where the real problems have been.
I thought the problems were worse in the South West; Dorset, Somerset and round here in Gloucestershire.
In my part of GL5 there have not been too many problems, though the stretch along the Severn has seen flooding as it does practically every year. Apart from the persistence of the heavy rain and wind, which is down to the not unusual position of the jet stream, the main cause of the recent flood damage has been the high tides. As Paul points out, the flooding in the South East is noteworthy because that part of the country is more likely to see drought conditions.
A “blessing” in one season can be a curse in other times. Also, just wondering if some of this is tidal action, as well as the two rivers.
So what exactly are the facts?
Facts we don’t need no stinking facts , just think how good this claim is for ‘the cause ‘ for after all even if its a complete lie . We saving the planet .
To often sceptics think their in fight about facts when there actual in a fight about BS.
Like brining a knife to a gun fight, its not going to end well.