By Disruptive climate change already underway in UK
Scientists warn that the UK is already seeing disruptive and worrying effect of climate change.
According to the recent UK State of Climate report, 2020 was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eight sunniest on record for the UK.
No other year has fallen in the top-10 for all three variables for the UK.
The report lists many worrying findings of recent climate changes, stating that the top 10 warmest years for the UK in the series from 1884 have occurred since 2002.
Furthermore, 2020 was one of the least snowy years on record with the main snow fall being northbound with no major widespread snow events.
Spring 2020 was the UK’s sunniest on record, sunnier than most UK summers
The year 2020 was also the UK’s fifth wettest year; six of the 10 wettest years have been since 1998.
Liz Bentley, head of the Royal Meteorological Society, said: “People don’t realise that even a small temperature rise of 0.1 or 0.2 degrees overall can make a huge difference – especially in the frequency and intensity of extreme events.”
“We had roads melting last year, rails start to buckle, electric cabling starts to buckle. We often say we’d like a climate like the Med, but people were soon complaining they were too hot – not just in the day but especially at night.2
“It often takes a massive high-impact event to change attitudes to the climate – so let’s hope what’s been happening recently with extreme weather will raise the will to tackle the problem.”
Scientists warn of worse extreme weather if global temperatures rise and politicians fail to curb carbon emissions.
So far government has promised to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5C, but this goal is looking more and more unlikely.
Even if the government could meet this goal this would still lead to a 10% increase in the amount of water that the air can hold.
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