20140104_R4
Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 04/01/2014
Event: Beddington: current weather due to "greenhouse gases that were in the atmosphere in the 1990s"
Attribution: BBC Radio 4
People:
- Sir John Beddington: Former UK Government Chief Scientist
- James Naughtie: Presenter, BBC Radio 4 Today programme
James Naughtie: The question in many people's minds is whether this is one of the occasional periods of wild weather that have always come along, from time to time, or whether we should be preparing to get used to more of these exceptional events. Are they becoming more regular visitors? Professor Sir John Beddington is the former Government Chief Scientific Advisor, now Professor of Natural Resources Management, Senior Advisor at the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University. Morning, Sir John.
Sir John Beddington: Good morning.
James Naughtie: Um, what's your own view about how we should take this particular period? Because I notice on the Met Office website, it says - and I quote - "It's impossible to point at a single weather event and put it down to climate change. Instead, we talk about probabilities." How do you think we should look at this?
Sir John Beddington: Well, I think the Met Office comment is a little obscure, but actually correct. It's pretty much impossible to attribute any particular weather event to climate change. But what we have - what we can expect to see is an increasing frequency of extreme events. So you might have something that occurs once in 100 years, like the 2007 floods - now that was once every 100 years or so. That is likely to become more frequent, as we move forward.
James Naughtie: Why?
Sir John Beddington: Well, it's to do with climate change. And one of the things that I don't think is really appreciated is that there's a big delay in terms of the effect that greenhouse gases have on climate and weather. So, for example, the weather we're currently experiencing in our climate is being determined pretty much by the greenhouse gases that were in the atmosphere in the 1990s - there's about a 20 [year] or so time lag.
James Naughtie: You mean that the excess greenhouse gas from that period is producing an increased incidence of severe weather in our particular climate, in this country?
Sir John Beddington: Well, it's affecting the climate, and I think we have - all the analysis shows that as the climate change, er, carries on, you get an increasing frequency of severe weather events, whether they're - as we're currently experiencing - in floods, but also droughts.
James Naughtie: You see - I - I think some people listening, who may be instinctively sceptical about this analysis, will say "Look, there's always been bad weather." If you look at the records - farmers will know from folklore, that they've heard of floods, storms in these particular years, everyone will know the story. Is it just one of those times?
Sir John Beddington: No, it's a reasonable point to make, of course there's always been extreme events. But I think what we're expecting - and actually starting to see evidence of - is an increasing frequency of these extreme events. Now, it's difficult to attribute a particular event to climate change, but it's the frequency, and therefore the patterns, of weather that we're actually seeing. And, you know, we can look back and it can be argued about, but I think the overall analysis is saying that we should have an expectation that the frequency of extreme events is going to become more regular.
James Naughtie: Because those greenhouse gases that you mentioned in the '90s, our emissions, haven't significantly changed since then, therefore if what we're seeing now is - in part, at least - a consequence of that, we can expect more of the same.
Sir John Beddington: Very much so, because of course greenhouse gas emissions have not declined since the 1990s, and what's in the atmosphere now is rather more than there was in the 1990s. So, if we look 20 years forward from now, about the time delay you see, we have an expectation that things are actually going to get worse, in terms of the frequency of these extreme events.
I think the key thing is operating on two time scales, though. One is that we really have got to be very good at predicting over the short term, you know. Operations like the Met Office and the Environment Agency do a pretty good job in predicting over the relatively short term, both what we're going to experience, where it's going to happen and when it's going to happen. And that's really, really important, and the emergency services are reacting to that.
But on a longer time scale, we've got to expect that there is going to be an increasing frequency, and that's going to affect the way we actually plan our infrastructure, and indeed the way, for example, your earlier comment, about the way agriculture operates.
James Naughtie: Professor Sir John Beddington, at Oxford, thanks very much for joining us.