London, Europe Brief News – Flooding is causing chaos on road and rail networks after heavy rain affected large parts of the UK.
The Met Office issued weather alerts as a band of rain – which arrived in Cornwall on Wednesday afternoon – travels across the country before passing over Scotland’s east coast on Friday.
The latest State of the UK Climate report indicates the UK has become wetter over the last few decades, although with significant annual variation. 2011-2020 was 9% wetter than 1961-1990.
The change in rainfall depends on location – for example, Scotland has experienced the greatest increase in rainfall, while most southern and eastern areas of England have experienced the least change. From the start of the observational record in 1862, six of the ten wettest years across the UK have occurred since 1998.
The number of days where rainfall totals exceed 95% and 99% of the 1961-1990 average have increased in the last decade, as have rainfall events exceeding 50 mm. Both these trends point to an increase in frequency and intensity of rainfall across the UK.
However, the variation in rainfall from year to year is still large, highlighting the importance of considering long-period natural variations.
Because current trends in extreme rainfall are within past natural variation, it can be difficult to isolate effects on our longer-term rainfall due to human influence by looking only at the observational record.
A study using high-resolution climate models predicts that the influence of human-caused climate change will likely not be seen clearly in short-duration (hourly and shorter timescale) extreme rainfall trends in the UK until at least the 2040s for winter and 2080s for summer.
