Source: Channel 4 News
URL: N/A
Date: 24/07/2018
Event: 2003 heatwave is expected to "become a normal summer by 2040"
Credit: Channel 4 News
People:
Jon Snow: Now it's not just the UK in the grip of the heatwave. Our weather presenter Liam Dutton is here to tell us more - Liam?
Liam Dutton: Well John, it's not just here in the UK, as you mentioned - around the northern hemisphere, this summer, there's been major heatwaves. Take Japan, the first example - yesterday it had its hottest day on record, the temperature soaring to 41.1 Celsius, officially a natural disaster, it's been declared there, due to the loss of life. Closer to home, only last week we had wildfires raging in Scandinavia, particularly Sweden, inside the Arctic Circle temperatures rising into the low 30s. And across the pond, towards eastern Canada temperatures there have been up to 35 degrees, giving the worst heatwave that they've seen there in decades.
Now, when you put all these hot bubbles together, around the planet, these heatwaves, you start to see the fingerprints of climate change on them, because you know, it's hot weather, more intense heatwaves, it's heat in places where it shouldn't normally be. So effectively, what we're describing today is extreme weather, in the future is likely to be the new norm. So it's a very concerning time, given what's going on around the planet at the moment.
Jon Snow: And a wake-up for us all.
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Cathy Newman: Well, earlier I spoke to Kathryn Brown, Head of Adaptation at the Committee on Climate Change. And I started by asking her whether we should change the way we farm in the UK, to survive these kinds of heatwaves.
Kathryn Brown: What you're seeing at the moment with water shortages, with crops stopping growing and livestock having to be fed with winter forage rather than summer grass at the moment, these are all impacts that suggest that maybe changes do need to be made in the future, as you switch to more resilient activities. But what we'd like to see is more measures being put in place to protect soil quality and quantity and to protect water availability. So on-farm reservoirs, for example - there's a great way for farmers to increase their own resilience to summer water shortages, but they are quite high-cost and there are grants available to help them do that.
Cathy Newman: We can't say specifically that climate change is related to this particular heatwave, that it's caused this particular heatwave. But it is, nevertheless, the case, isn't it, that climate change and global warming will increase the severity of extreme weather and the frequency.
Kathryn Brown: That's right. So what we expect in the UK is for heatwaves like the one we're experiencing, at the moment, to become more frequent and more intense. And if you look back at the heatwave from 2003 as an example, we expect that to become a normal summer by 2040, under a, sort of, medium level of global warming.
Cathy Newman: And what is the impact of that, in terms of the cost to human lives and livelihoods?
Kathryn Brown: There are impacts on health and wellbeing, so that mortality starts to rise, above temperatures of about 20 degrees. There's impacts on productivity and wellbeing, because people can't sleep at night when temperatures are over 26 degrees. And also obviously, if you're overheating in the work environment, your productivity goes down. There's impacts on agricultural production and increasingly, as well, impacts on the natural environment.
Cathy Newman: Do we have to have a much more fundamental approach to changing the way we live, to cope with these kinds of heatwaves in future?
Kathryn Brown: A lot of the measures that people can take are very low-cost. So things like putting in tinted window film or putting greenery up your walls of your house can act to cool your house quite significantly, and those are very low-cost. Behavioural measures, things like even closing your curtains during the day and keeping all of the heat out and then opening windows at night, that actually has quite a big impact.
Cathy Newman: It all sounds a bit obvious, though, doesn't it - I mean, you know, the Met Office was criticised for saying, you know, keep out of the sun at midday. I mean, aren't these things that people are doing anyway?
Kathryn Brown: Some of them are quite difficult for people because, for instance, if you want to keep your windows open all night, sometimes if you're living in an urban area the noise can affect you, or there's security concerns. And again, that's why we want to see government putting in place a standard so that these buildings are actually designed to be effective in higher temperatures, rather than having to rely on people to take these, sort of, more behavioural measures.
Cathy Newman: Kathryn Brown, thank you very much for joining us.
Kathryn Brown: Thank you.