There’s quite a hullabaloo in the UK as the Met Office tries to link recent flooding in Bridgwater, Somerset with global warming, with Lord Lawson even calling Met Office Julia Slingo’s claims “absurd”. Josh even has a cartoon at Bishop Hill about it.
But, even more instructive than the row is this historic map that shows flooding would likely be a normal occurrence in Bridgwater in the county of Somerset, UK, located on this map at right.
Now look at this map from 878AD. “Swamp or Alluvium” anyone? The arrow notation is mine. This is the Danelaw map, from 878 AD, drawn in modern style:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw
People have been draining the area known as the Somerset Levels since before the Domesday Book in 1086AD. The Levels were frequently flooded by the sea during high tides, a problem that was not resolved until the sea defences were enhanced in the early 20th century.
So, is it any surprise that the water wants to follow the path of least resistance with gravity rather than it being a new feature of “climate change”?
h/t to Jabba The cat
Oh the difference a year makes!
Well they do say be careful what you wish for.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/05/02/uk-drought-britain-could-see-standpipes-dry-winter-caroline-spelman-dry-winter_n_1469763.html
Anyone else watch the CNBC interview with the Chairman of AIG, America’s largest property and casualty insurance company. The anchor asked a leading question: were the recent weather events related to climate change? He made light of the question by remarking that all of the snow outside (the interview was taking place in New York) certainly suggested otherwise. The anchor reworded her question. Thankfully, the AIG Chairman refused to accept the thesis that the weather — snow and cold in the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. and drought in California — were caused by climate change. He insisted that the weather was always changing and as an insurer, they had to be prepared for all possible outcomes.
Well, if the looney green bureaucrats in the UK can’t kill these people outright by ultra high energy prices in winter or royal reincarnation as a killer virus, I suppose they can simply flood these poor people out by deliberately not dredging and/or investing in flood abatement infrastructure routinely employed by most civilized/well off societies to mitigate routine acts of nature.
Tim says:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/05/02/uk-drought-britain-could-see-standpipes-dry-winter-caroline-spelman-dry-winter_n_1469763.html
Note the images in the slideshow at the foot of the page.That’s one heck of a drought! LOL
Why bother voting for a candidate when the environmentalists and unelected EU bureaucrats make all the important decisions. Where were your MPs when all this was happening? Why weren’t they thundering away about all this.
The big joke is the EU thought its formation would be a competitive block to the USA. How they underestimated what they were up against! The only chance this could happen is if the US continues to let the same species have so much say in the way forward – a fear I have begun to feel strongly.
Why would the UK (and Germany) let European Lilliputians that make up the rest of the population of that failed mini-sub-continent tie them up so tightly and engineer that the productive ones pay for the whole sorry enterprise. People have become ineffectual and dependent on government in the EU under the classic strategy of the world’s many-tried-all-failed ideology. Little did they know that when the iron curtain fell, it would release the dreaded plague that it has.
To be fair, we Brits do rather enjoy a good moan about the weather – particularly when it’s rain, for which we have more words than the Eskimos do for snow.
On the other hand, we’ve had a southerly Jet stream spinning lows at us for about six weeks solid now, one after another. It’s like a water-based version of watching one of those endless goods trains going by, and we’re getting a bit fed up with the monotony. As for the Met Office, well, the less said, the better for my blood pressure.
Gail Combs says:
February 13, 2014 at 1:59 pm
“The enhanced thermal gradient between latitudes about 50° and 60–65°N in this part of the world is thought to have provided a basis for the development of some greater wind storms in these latitudes than have occurred in most of the last 100 years, though there are signs that in about the last decade or two storminess has been increasing again.”
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-7692-5_34
Detailed look at storms here in Europe.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=P4n1z9rOh5MC&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=little+ice+age+storms+europe+lamb&ots=etCZOPrKXK&sig=lNC9bRp-6lObnkOLLc6N6JGvyiM
“The onset of the Little Ice Age (around 1350 AD), however, shows an intensified bottom current circulation most probably due to amplifying westerly winds and a decrease in water temperatures in connection with more frequent advances of higher saline Atlantic waters. The Little Ice Age can be divided into 3 phases: a stormy “zonal” onset, a calm “meridional” maximum and a stormy “zonal” end. The stormy phases are characterized by a sedimentation mode similar to that of recent winter conditions while the Little Ice Age Maximum shows conditions comparable to exceptional cold modern winters.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003101829500114X
“Although our data may not be statistically accurate, an increasing level of storm surge elevations over the recent Holocene is observed with a particular maximum during the Little Ice Age.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0025322795000613
“Violent storms caused massive flooding and loss of life. … seen in opening the bodies of those who had died in the beginning of the attack), when the pulse is always frequent, small, and occasionally …However, the wide variability of the Little Ice Age continued for at least 150 years …”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2627969/pdf/10653562.pdf
“Since the SLP during the LMM winter was significantly higher in northeastern Europe but below normal over the central and western Mediterranean, more frequent blocking situations were connected with cold air outbreaks towards central and eastern Europe. Springs were cold and characterized by a southward shift of the mid-latitude storm tracks. Summers in western, central Europe and northern Europe were wetter and slightly cooler than they are today due to a weaker Azores high and a more southerly position of the mean polar front axes. Autumns showed a significantly higher pressure over northern Europe and a lower pressure over continental Europe and the Mediterranean…..”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1010667524422
I thought Global Warming was going to cause droughts. It causes flooding now?
Reminds me of my friend back in graduate school who asked in all seriousness “A Thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, but how does it know?”
That’s pretty much how I feel about all the diametrically opposed CAGW effects.
If a warming world is going to cause more extreme weather, why are summers less stormy than winters?
“Instrumental and documentary records of storminess along the Atlantic coast of western Europe show that storm activity exhibits strong spatial and temporal variability at annual and decadal scales. There is evidence of periods of increased storminess during the Little Ice Age (LIA) (AD 1570–1990), and archival records show that these periods are also associated with sand movement in coastal areas.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618208000190
“Significant transgressive dune accretion at 2.2 and 1.5 ka, implies abundant sand supply and strong onshore winds The most recent dune-building period dates to AD1770-1905 and coincides with a predominantly negative winter North Atlantic Oscillation index (NAOi).”
http://hol.sagepub.com/content/16/3/341.short
“The results show periods of relatively high dp(abs)24 and enhanced storminess around 1900 and the early to mid-1990s, and a relatively quiescent period from about 1930 to the early 1960s, in keeping with earlier studies. There is little evidence that the mid- to late nineteenth century was less stormy than the present, and there is no sign of a sustained enhanced storminess signal associated with “global warming.”
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&profile=ehost&scope=site&authtype=crawler&jrnl=08948755&AN=36003438&h=Ir60IgnnOtZgCilUINwfWNb9e2S%2FPkKjg%2FeVGok3gvOmcxh3WrL9JNPtEOvZA59tF2je%2BKa9UmeAKaHBepVrSQ%3D%3D&crl=c
Peter Plail says:
February 13, 2014 at 3:17 pm
If a warming world is going to cause more extreme weather, why are summers less stormy than winters?
Thats because they have it backwards as usual. A cooling world causes more extreme weather and winters are much more stormy than summers. This is due to much colder air at the pole in winter causing much bigger temperature difference between the tropics. They lie through their teeth supporting an agenda and becomes obvious just studying how the planet behaves.
Last year at this time, it was global warming causing drought.
Rain, drought, rain, drought, rain, drought, ice age, interglacial, ice age, interglacial etc. etc. etc.
“Revealed: how green ideology turned a deluge into a flood”:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9137131/instant-wildlife-just-add-water/
I have lived and fished in Somerset or Zommerzet as we does says it, and I remember fishing in the drains (north and south drains are just that, large rivers dug into the peat to drain the land) in the 70’s/80’s and they were a good few feet deep but over the last few years they have silted up and got choked with weed and now many of my old fishing spots are unfishable, In the old days when they dredged the silt (mostly peat and a little clay) it was left on the bank and the local wildlife enjoyed the meal of the freshwater oysters It also built up the bank and in a few weeks was back to normal fishing again, also I have to point out that several places have been flooded to create nature reserves so parts of the land that would have taken up water are already flooded.
P.s my Grandfather once told me how in the winter months he used to go to school by boat because of the flooding on the levels.
Matt G says: @ur momisugly February 13, 2014 at 2:49 pm
Thanks much, now I get to go read some more. GRIN
(picky picky – I think the map shows Cambridge slightly east of its actual location, judging by where the Isle of Ely would have to be). For other non-Britons, the town and cathedral of Ely – one of the loveliest spots in England, methinks – sit on a patch of high ground 15 miles north-northeast of Cambridge. It has been my good fortune to see it three times. And driving north from there, across the fens towards Lincoln, the drainage works are in evidence everywhere.
It is all the (I love the irony of this) competence of the EU the UK has to ask and get permission to dredge! the blog EUreferendum has it all!
My cartoon comment on the english floods and the Met office
http://www.itsnotclimatescience.com/0025.5.html
I’ve also linked to this article on the Links page
Property developers build on flood plains, and it is the fault of environmentalists that the buildings get flooded?
Great find.
Ah Clem Feb 13 12:57pm asks “Does this mean sea level has been falling?“. In Somerset, yes it has. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/01/if-sea-level-was-rising-wouldnt-someone-have-noticed/#comment-381535
From Eureferendum: Flooding: a synergy between “green” ideologues and Brussels
Richard North, 13/02/2014 http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84705
“Farmers outraged after EA sells off dredging equipment”
http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/hot-topics/climate-change/farmers-outraged-after-ea-sells-off-dredging-equipment/62299.article
Property developers build on flood plains, and it is the fault of environmentalists that the buildings get flooded?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Yep. It’s their deliberate policy to not mitigate the risk of flooding. Most dredging and maintenance has been stopped or sharply reduced since the 1990s; however, preparation for model forecasted sea level rise is a top priority. Interestingly, the Met forecast for January, February and March predicted slightly above average rain.