Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 18/06/2013
Event: Met Office to investigate link between "weird" UK weather and climate change
People:
Justin Webb: Lovely weather for the time of year, isn't it - no, it isn't, or at least it hasn't been. And the Met Office have noticed, and they've set up a meeting, a workshop, a summit even, to work out what might be going on. Roger Harrabin is our Environment Analyst. But they can't reach any conclusions, Roger, can they?
Roger Harrabin: No, they can't reach any conclusions, Justin, but you know, the weather we've been having is really quite exceptional. Coldest spring for 50 years - I was up at a farm in Lincolnshire last week, where they are ploughing in the rape, because the oilseed rape crop has failed. That comes with the cold spring, and preceded by the record wet in England, and then preceded in turn by the drought. Now, if you had asked weather and climate scientists five years ago, you know: "Weather and climate change, are they related?" they would have airily dismissed it: "Oh, no, no, no, no - completely different". But now the weather has been so weird, not just in the UK but round the world, that they're starting to wonder whether they might be related.
So, for instance, last year I was - not this winter but last winter, I spent more or less a year in Michigan in the central United States. And I was warned: "You will not see the sun from December until April - it will be cloudy, overcast, there will be snow on the ground, it will be bitterly cold and you will regret staying here". People were apologising in January, as they went round in shorts: "We're really sorry, we have no idea what happened to the winter. Completely unprecedented, as far as we can see". So they are asking now whether climate change might be related. They can't be sure but they think there may be a possibility.
Justin Webb: Yeah, but... a possibility, where's that going to get us? I mean, number one, there's nothing they can do about it anyway, at least at this summit, but number two, they're going to be so cautious, aren't they, that even if they did decide - behind the scenes, as it were - that it is something to do with climate change, they're not going to want to say so.
Roger Harrabin: Er, well, the Met Office have been scorched by, I think, in the past, to say [?] over-confident predictions in the past, and they are now in a mode of extremely humble caution. And so you're right, in a sense, that they won't come out with anything, but if you do talk to the scientists behind the scenes, they are concerned about the weather. And there's one very obvious potential link, which is the link between the melting of the Arctic sea ice and the jet stream, which has left us stuck in hideous weather patterns. And that is something they're investigating, although they say they can't be certain, it may be changes in the North Atlantic, circulation currents, and indeed the Pacific, too, so - right, they won't put their finger on it. But the suspicions are building up.
Justin Webb: Roger Harrabin, thanks.
John Humphrys: And they can't do anything about it, as you said, Justin.