Seven ways we can fight back against flooding February 4, 2016 by Chris Kilsby, Newcastle University
here is no panacea for flood events, but there a range of things we can either do better or start doing to mitigate or adapt to them.
The recent UK floods caused by Storm Desmond in the first week of December 2015 were devastating on both sides of the Pennines. A record-breaking 341mm of rain fell in 24 hours, and 405mm in 48 hours – another record. Tens of thousands of people had to evacuate their homes, there was widespread power loss after two substations were flooded, and transport links were shut down across the region.
What made this flood especially severe is that the previous two months were very wet. Extreme weather events such as Storm Desmond tend not to occur in isolation and nor are they evenly spaced out. In Cumbria there had already been a cluster of previous storms and this was the big one.
To manage such large floods we need to understand the sequence of events that occurs during a period of intense rainfall and how this may be changing. But we also need to learn to deal with the flood waters in ways that are affordable and sustainable.
1. Get to grips with climate change
Every time an extreme weather event takes place, such as a flood or drought, people ask "was that caused by climate change?" A better question to ask is "How much more likely are these events under a changed climate?" So, if such a large event used to have an annual probability of occurrence of 1%, and that has now gone up to 2%, we could say that climate change has doubled the probability of it happening. This is crucial in preparing for future extreme weather events.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-02-ways.html#jCp
