Source: Channel 4 News
URL: N/A
Date: 19/12/2010
Event: Professor Mike Lockwood is interviewed on Channel 4 News.
People:
Alex Thomson: And I've been speaking to one meteorologist who is convinced we will see more severe winters in this country in years to come. It's all, he says, because of the way the sun affects the jet stream. Professor Mike Lockwood from Reading University told me what he thought was happening to the blocking which appears to be going on with our weather system.
Mike Lockwood: The blocking event's a pattern of the whole atmosphere, and the easiest way to image it, to see it is when the jet stream, which meanders around all the time... but if the jet stream meanders get so large that it actually doubles back on itself, then it tends to drag the cold Arctic air back from the north-east, back into over [sic] Europe.
Alex Thomson: Now the obvious question, therefore - what is causing this high level jet stream to drag in these northerly and easterly winds?
Mike Lockwood: We've been studying a long temperature record and we find that statistically there is an occurrence of more winters like this when solar activity is low...
Alex Thomson: Is it a series of winters, is it a real genuine change?
Mike Lockwood: Well, a series of winters, it may get better in the short term, over the next couple of years, as the sunspot cycle picks up again. And so, long-term, I think we should expect to see more winters like this.
Alex Thomson: What could long-term mean, could it mean we're in for, sort of, ten winters like this, twenty, thirty, a century of winters? What's your hunch, looking back through time to the 17th century, as you have?
Mike Lockwood: It would be a century of them. Although one should stress this is statistical. If you go back to the Maunder Minimum, which was the last time that the sun was in one of its Grand Minima, and it was called the Little Ice Age, Europe had a lot more cold winters. It's not exclusively cold, but you just get more of them. And this could go on for two or three hundred years, yes.
Alex Thomson: Well let's draw the science into the vulgar world of politics, would you therefore welcome what Philip Hammond the Transport Secretary is doing, which is he's called upon a scientist to come forward, conduct a study to say hang on a minute, are things really changing out there, and if they are, should we plan accordingly? Presumably you'd welcome that.
Mike Lockwood: Oh, definitely. I think we've grown used to mild winters, and we should be prepared for cold winters. Even in a globally warming world, we have to be prepared for cold winters, and we've actually had thirty or so years with very few cold winters. And we need to be more prepared for them, er... Practices like ready-to-go deliveries and things like that may not be the way to go, we may have to warehouse things like we used to, things like that. So it does have very large implications and yes, we should expect this, not expect not to have cold winters.
Alex Thomson: Professor Mike Lockwood speaking to me earlier. Well, we were hoping to speak to one of the people who co-ordinates long-term planning in this country later in this programme. Weather permitting - his train's delayed at the moment. You can get the latest travel information and the picture around the country on our website of course, channel4.com/news, and there will be a full weather forecast coming up, right after the news.