Catastrophic rainfall events, of the type predicted by scientists due to global warming is flooding the Midlands. Britain received a month's worth of rainfall in one day causing severe flooding in Yorkshire on 24 June, and now in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. The flooding is causing widespread property damage, power outages and evacuations. The flood magnitude exceeds the 1947 flood which was thought to be the worst in 200 years. British weather forecasters listed the type of weather events to be expected from global climate change ten years ago. High on the list was extreme rainfall. Canadian scientists have also studied the impact of atmospheric warming using 75 years of rainfall data on land, and found significant increases in amounts between 40 and 70 degrees north latitude. Their study will be published in Nature on Thursday. The 1947 event inundated 700,000 acres and caused an estimated 4 billion pounds of damage. Flooding was caused then by heavy snow melt from a particularly cold winter. During that winter, the island nation saw 40 consecutive days of snowfall. But this flood is a new phenomenon apparently caused by a shift in mid-latitude weather patterns due to the greenhouse effect according to weather experts.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Great Britian is Flooding
Catastrophic rainfall events, of the type predicted by scientists due to global warming is flooding the Midlands. Britain received a month's worth of rainfall in one day causing severe flooding in Yorkshire on 24 June, and now in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. The flooding is causing widespread property damage, power outages and evacuations. The flood magnitude exceeds the 1947 flood which was thought to be the worst in 200 years. British weather forecasters listed the type of weather events to be expected from global climate change ten years ago. High on the list was extreme rainfall. Canadian scientists have also studied the impact of atmospheric warming using 75 years of rainfall data on land, and found significant increases in amounts between 40 and 70 degrees north latitude. Their study will be published in Nature on Thursday. The 1947 event inundated 700,000 acres and caused an estimated 4 billion pounds of damage. Flooding was caused then by heavy snow melt from a particularly cold winter. During that winter, the island nation saw 40 consecutive days of snowfall. But this flood is a new phenomenon apparently caused by a shift in mid-latitude weather patterns due to the greenhouse effect according to weather experts.