How will global climate change affect the British Isles?
Britain is at the same latitude as Labrador, yet is much warmer. The reason for this is that a current called the "Gulf Stream" carries water from the Caribbean across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, then to Greenland and back to the Caribbean Britain is one of the few places where general circulation models predict a very weak warming or even slight cooling. This is due to an influx of fresh water from the northerly flowing Gulf Stream, which comes from a combination of enhanced melting from Greenland, an increased flux of meltwater from sea ice, and increased precipitation.
While most scientists don't believe that the meridional overturning circulation will completely shut off and isolate the Gulf Stream, any weakening would reduce the amount of warm water and its climate-moderating influences to Western Europe.
It is the changes in weather patterns that make predicting rainfall particularly difficult. While different climate models are in broad agreement about future warming on a global scale, when it comes to predicting how these changes will impact weather – and consequently rainfall – there is less agreement at a detailed level. It is likely that in a warmer climate heavy rainfall will increase and be produced by fewer more intense events.
This could lead to longer dry spells and a higher risk of floods. So far, any impact that climate change may have had generally on regional rainfall cannot be distinguished from natural variations. However, for some specific cases a signal is starting to emerge.
A recent study showed that man-made climate change substantially increased the odds of damaging floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000. For the UK, current understanding suggests that increases in heavy rainfall during winter may start to become discernible more generally in the 2020s. Climate models and observations are improving all the time and the reliability of predictions is likely to improve significantly over the next few years.
In particular, new satellites and more detailed models are opening up new possibilities for understanding and predicting how water cycles through the climate system. For example, current climate models typically represent atmospheric processes only down to scales of about 50-100km. This limits their ability to incorporate the effects of mountains and coastlines and means that small-scale processes, such as convection, must be represented by average approximations.
In addition, the latest regional climate models capture daily rainfall on large scales but are not good at capturing heavier or more localised events. However, the latest generation of localised weather forecasting models represent scales down to 1km and can capture these localised features. Scientists are now starting to apply these models to climate change studies, raising the possibility of much more confidence in their predictions of changes in extreme rainfall.
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This post by The Guardian is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
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