BBC Says Flash Floods Getting Worse
By Paul Homewood
Today’s dose of BBC climate propaganda:
Flash flooding affects cities across the world and has become more common because of climate change.
Parts of London and the south of England were left underwater after heavy rain in July.
What is flash flooding?
Flash floods usually happen during intense rainfall – when the amount of water is too much for drains and sewers to deal with.
It can occur very quickly and without much warning.
Roads can become unpassable – with vehicles abandoned – and homes and shops damaged by floodwater.
Floods can affect key public infrastructure including transport networks and hospitals. In London, some hospitals had to ask patients to stay away after they lost power.
Why does it happen in cities and towns?
Urban areas are more likely to experience this type of "surface water" flooding because they have a lot of hard surfaces – everything from paved front gardens to roads, car parks and high streets.
When rain hits them it can’t soak into the ground as it would do in the countryside.
An example was seen when New York City was hit by Storm Elsa in July, flooding the subway system.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57969877
You would have thought the BBC has answered its own question in those last few sentences, but, surprise surprise, they have to wheel out the climate change bogeyman:
In many places – including much of the UK – old sewer systems were built based on historic rainfall projections.
Dr Veronica Edmonds-Brown of the University of Hertfordshire said the growth of London was also a problem as its Victorian era drainage system "cannot cope with the huge increase in population".
What utter drivel!
Victorian sewers were not built to channel rainfall, they were designed to carry sewage away. Can you honestly imagine some Victorian engineer working out how much rainfall might come down? The harsh truth is that London and other cities have long ago outgrown those old sewers.
Much more of a problem though is that cities are now almost entirely concreted over. Back in Victorian times, large areas were bare earth and vegetation, so rainfall simply drained away into the soil rather than down drains.
Naturally the BBC go further:
Many factors contribute to flooding, but climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and so these storms become more intense.
According to Prof Hayley Fowler, of the UK Climate Resilience Programme, flash flooding used to be "relatively unusual".
But she said warming means "these heavy short-duration bursts from thunderstorms which cause flash flooding are becoming more common".
Ms Fowler’s research suggests flash floods – measured as 30mm of rain per hour – "will increase five fold by the 2080s", if climate change continues on its current track.
As is usually the case with these claims, there is no attempt to provide any data backing them up, only some dire warning of what might happen in sixty years time. Where is the evidence that flash floods are more common now? And where is the evidence that rainfall in England is getting more extreme?
In fact, the study which the BBC link to, by Fowler herself, shows that there is no such trend here. This is based on another Fowler study, which concludes:
“Natural variability appears to dominate current observed trends”
If, of course, her theory is correct, we would expect to see clear evidence at the longest running weather site in the country, at Radcliffe Observatory, at Oxford University.
But we don’t:
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?a6f37t7j3osa6gt82g8oov2e20
When the data does not fit the theory, change the theory!
All of this latest BBC propaganda is, of course, on the back of some flash floods in London on Sunday, where the highest daily rainfall was just 41.6mm:
This, needless to say, is not an unusual occurrence.
In 1975, four times as much fell in the space of less than three hours over Hampstead. (Christopher Booker maintains that most of this fell in about 20 minutes, as he was sat on a bus in the middle of it all!)
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-extremes
In any other branch of science, no scientist would make claims without the facts to back it up. But in climate science, the climate charlatans are allowed to make it up as they go along.
Trackbacks
- News Round-Up – The Daily Sceptic
- BBC’s Latest Crackpot Claim: Flash Floods Getting Worse Because…Climate - Natura Revelata
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Thanks for your continuing service, which I really appreciate.
Just to say that I was in the 1975 storm, which was incredible. I remember drain lids sitting on top of fountains of water.
It seems astonishing that most journalists continue to associate the most normal events all under the umbrella of climate change.
We’re going to need a bigger ☔ – sound the alarm!
Climate science is purely politics. The extreme weather is the latest line of gimmickry. We never used to have any extremes apparently! Sadly, the science and long history of weather recording are not counted against the doom-mongers certainty that the predictions of a small number of badly flawed models are right.
Today, I heard that Womans’ Hour is pushing the need to get more women on the action-committees to push the government to save the world.
I find the popular line that the increased temperature will cause more moisture to be held amazing, as it is the clouds that are the main contributor to the earth’s albedo and more moisture means more clouds, means less insolation….. self-regulation.
Yes more moisture HELD. For that extra moisture to not be held (I.e. rain) temperatures would have to revert to “normal”. Otherwise there’s no additional rain.
Those London fogs could be back, isnt that when the air holds 100% or near enough humidity ?
The BBC have an increasing incidence of being unfit for purpose! Their bigotry and propaganda has an ever increasing Leftist bias, so much so that I don’t watch TV any more allowing me the satisfaction of not paying a TV licence fee.
Sadly Channel 4 are the same and I would guess ITV are too? I listen to BBC Radio 2, but my annoyance at their biased news reports and Jeremy Vine’s midday programme has increased over the years. It is increasingly in defiance of its charter, to be politically neutral!
An investigation into this bias is long overdue!
I recall from the news that a Sikh gentleman who is the local mayor or the London area affected explained that the surface water drains can cope but at this time of year the grills of the drains tend to be blocked by flora, dead leaves, flower heads etc and that residents cleared these away the water disappeared pretty quickly
Of course, not all residents had the wherewithall to notice this. Another thing is that people mix up sewers with surface water drains, they are usually separate and are allowed to be to drain straight into the Thames as is the case in London or any other natural water courses throughout the country.
One last point, how often are the council clearing out the street drain sumps?
Can have a bearing on the ability of the drain to take the water away.
Spot on, Skepticstan.
Generally the Victorian engineers did a great job with drainage (and with installing potable water mains.)
Nowadays they would be criticised for ‘over engineering’, but of course, the cost of installing a 12 inch pipe isn’t twice (let alone four times) the cost of a 6 inch pipe.
But nothing lasts forever. Especially when you don’t maintain it, not to mention when you multiply the population using the pipe or drain by five or more.
When I was a nipper, I remember that at least annually, a gully sucker went up and down the street removing loose gravel and detritus from drainage gullys. How often do you see this today?
How many kebab joints were there 50 years ago? Just ask a drainage engineer about the number of times drains are today blocked by congealed mutton fat.
50 years ago, almost all Parishes employed a ‘lengthsman’, (usually not the sharpest tool in the drawer, but a useful member of the community) who was charged with ensuring that all ditches in the Parish were kept clear and working properly. Amongst other essential duties. How many of these imprtant if humble people still had a job ten years later?
I live in York, where flooding has been a perennial problem at least since the Romans went home. In 1982 a major flood barrier on the river Foss was constructed, which alleviated problems. But the geniuses who designed it, placed the electric control gear well below the maximum flood level (the Planners thought it looked nicer) and didn’t do much of a job in sealing the cables entering the structure.
In 2000, there was major flooding in York. Areas that had never been known to flood were inundated. Things worked better once shopping trolleys and old mattresses had been removed from drainage ditches. The almost new Foss barrier was kept more or less operational by teams of workmen, on a 24 hour basis and, frankly taking some risks with flood water approaching the high voltage equipment.
But the rain stopped and no lessons were learned.
In 2015 another flood event and they finished by lifting the barrier because of flooding in the basement. Hundreds of properties were flooded.
Eventually it was decided to relocate the electrical gear and install uprated pumps.
Of course, both the 2000 and 2015 floods (and other less spectacular intervening floods) were confidently attributed to Climate Change.
Yes folks, a degree of alleged temperature rise since the end of the Little Ice Age sure fooled those Victorian engineers.
Perhaps because of White Supremacist Privilege?
Martin, we’ve been here before with lack of proper maintenance causing flooding.
The recent Somerset Levels floods were immediately pounced upon by the green blob as evidence of climate change. Locals knew better and pointed out the obvious – the water channels had silted up.
My old haunt of Chesham in Bucks is a vale town with steep hills either side. Heavy rain would often overwhelm the drains and bring mud from the woods and fields to block them up. It took a local councillor to escort Chiltern District maintenance staff and show them the problem, which they eventually fixed. Climate had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
We get gully cleaners round here. They suck up all the rubbish but, when they finish the ‘knock-out’ the pebbles and heavy gravel o to the road next to the gully. Doesn’t take much torrential CC rain to wash it back down the gully!!
The Somerset Levels floods were caused by EU regulations prohibiting drainage so as to help wildlife but the flooding killed many more creatures than they saved.
Fortunately, a very useful MP,. Owen Paterson, also a sceptic, oversaw drainage after the UK escaped from the wretched EU and the problems were corrected.
In our village the old Victorian drains alongside the main road have never been upgraded.
Many drains are blocked, and the silt that fills them rarely cleared.
This means that because drains can only cope with 50% of the water than they used to, they turn into giant culverts.
Flash flooding has as much to do with poor maintenance by local authorities as it has to do with AGW.
Quite right. It also has little to do with population and the increase in foul waste but much to do with surface water run-off from the extension of hard surfaces. You would think that Dr Edmonds-Brown would make that distinction.
Bazalgette (Sp?) separated the two types of waste as much as possible so that foul water went down to the pumping station at Crossness and Abbey Mills in east London and surface water went into the Thames.
Where I live, and when I was involved in such things, the pipes are only designed for the 1 in 20yr or 5% flows. The backup for higher flows was ‘overland’ and we had to find way to carry that , but make sure the habitable floor levels were above that. I imagine this is the same in London as these things are pretty universal ( western countries) unless its critical infrastructure
The film, ‘Point Blank’, has a scene shot in an open storm drain in Cincinnati. The channel is huge yet the flow of water the merest trickle. But, self-evidently, the planners in that city have a realistic view of capacity and possibility and have made allowance.
So many people who have such a high regard for nature and related issues, especially in London, and yet when nature intrudes on their lives they self-evidently don’t like it. They prefer the family life of dung beetles and allow for the savage terminations of natural life for entertainment’s sake (assorted predators wiping-out a bait-ball and that’s a natural phenomenon, have three days of high temperatures once in a while and all else is forgotten).
Planners and developers have taken advantage of London and the floods could be as much a grim reminder of what greed can do rather than the weather. London has fallen sadly behind since Bazalgette, has has been squeezed too hard and no surprise that the pips are squeaking.
Further evidence, as if it was needed, that climate change is politics not science.
You surely mean manmade CC, since CC has been on Earth for aeons.
The manmade claims are exaggerated very very manifold indeed, fooling the gullible.
climate change crisis
Couple of thoughts on this. In the 40+ years I’ve lived or had offspring in the Derby area the city has expanded in a huge way, it still is. The areas being used for housing is pretty flat on the east side of the city. Cycling round I see grass and weeds growing out of the drains. Seems a recipe for flash floods to me but I’m not a climate scientist.
The second I remember a storm one summer that parked itself in one place for several hours. I’ve no idea how much rain fell but I’ve never seen the like in the UK. The result was several areas where Earth and rocks were washed out of hillsides. But most memorable was the resulting flood. A huge area under water and further down stream , where the rain hadn’t been so heavy the rivers burst their banks.
For those interested this is where the flood was
Here is a precise what3words address, made of 3 random words. Every 3 metre square in the world has its own unique what3words address.
https://w3w.co/plugged.reserved.inherits
Here is the location for Google
56.3184970, -3.9857300
Here is a report of such a storm south of Ellensburg, WA
Click to access ger_washington_geology_2001_v29_no3-4.pdf
Marty, with me along for scale in photos, documented a similar storm event northwest of Ellensburg. At this time I don’t have a link. Sorry.
Also sorry that the entire thing appeared here.
John
Thanks Paul for continuing to highlight these issues and the nonsense pumped out by the BBC non-stop.
I am sure that lack of maintenance is a big part of the problem. Here in East Sussex our council’s approach is:
“We clean all roadside drainage gullies and, where necessary, connecting pipework at least once every three years.
Rather than clear all gullies the same number of times each year, we have optimised our gully emptying frequencies. This means that we empty those gullies that often become blocked more frequently than those that don’t.”
I know from just driving/walking around here in rural Sussex how often these drains are blocked. Perhaps instead of awarding themselves significant increases in allowances of having officers with 6 figure+ salaries the money would be better used for this?
You also need to add in what we pay towards their over-generous pensions: for every £1 the public servant contributes towards their pension, we, the sucker taxpayers pay an additional £3.5 approx. And to add insult to this robbery, they want to remove the triple lock from the measly state pension.
It occurs to me that, further to my jeremiad of 11:58, the BBC’s “Environ-mental Correspondents” and News Editors have neither the honesty, the acuity nor the diligence to make a Parish ‘Lengthsman’.
The same must be said about the overwhelming majority of ‘Academics’. (97% at last?).
I apologise unreservedly if my comments and comparisons upset any surviving ‘Lengthsmen’
Martin, thank you – I’ve learned something new today. 🙂
There isn’t a Radcliffe College at Oxford. Probably what was meant was this:
https://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/about/history/radcliffe-observatory/
Yes, that’s right – it’s the Radcliffe Observatory
Never mind the drainage system, it is the BBC that is no longer fit for purpose.
C’mon, it’s an excellent conduit for sewage.
Actually Paul, you are not quite correct in stating London has been concreted over since Victorian times. London is actually one of the greenest Capitals in the world with lots of parks and open spaces. The suburbs were built with gardens. Even small terraced houses can have front and back gardens.
Just look at a map of London. See the green?
However, there is a rainfall problem with London. It has lots of hills. Some of them very large hills. The real problem arises because this year, late winter/early spring had plenty of rainfall and then there was a significant period without any at all. What happens then is the earth turns to concrete (and also London is built on rafts of clay in different parts of the Capital), after short bursts of heavy rain all the water rushes off the hard earth underneath the green spaces and goes downhill.
As we all know by now, only George Monbiot can make water flow uphill and there is a limit to how many places he can be at one time.
Then, there is another aspect to London. It has lots of little rivers and streams and if they are not known about or are long forgotten or are not maintained properly, then the flood water from some ‘cloudbursts’ fills the streams and the next period of heavy rain causes flooding.
It’s not a campaign ?
FFS the item was tweeted by 7 BBC official blue tick accounts
.. https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1419554086832283652
Where does Extinction Rebellion end, and the BBC start ??
cos by the means of the “Become a BBC Climate Change Storyteller” advert on Radio Humberside at 9:48aam they are the same Climate Change campaigning organisation building up a stream of PR for COP26
This Twitter Advert is nowhere near as strong as the audio was
..we had passionate pleas from Attenborough
“Our Climate is changing etc. ”
..It was nowhere near impartial
“Where does Extinction Rebellion end, and the BBC start ??”
You can’t tell. It is a successful fusion.
COP 26 is exactly the reason for these daily “expert reports”.
Of note:
The great 1928 flood of London
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26153241
It’s not just the BBC. I read the Allegra Stratton article in the Daily Telegraph on line late last night (the one about not rinsing dishes in order to save the planet). I went to the Comments to see the reaction. Most remarks were how ridiculous the statements were but one person had mildly commented that he was tired of the one sided reporting on the climate by the DT and thought it was time they published reports pointing out the other side of the discussion. He put forward about six names of scientists who he thought could do the job. I think he had about 30 likes but his comments were followed by about six other people all saying they agreed with him absolutely and suggesting further suitable names. I went back on line this morning and all those comments had disappeared! It’s frightening. Just who is paying the DT and why are they afraid!
One thing I do remember is that, regrettably, Paul Homewood’s name was not mentioned.
No one mentions that the population increase in London of around 50% since the early 80’s due to immigration would be a big factor also on the normal volumes in existing sewers and drainage, which I presume would not have been increased in line. (like hospitals etc)
All those extra eating joints producing ‘fat bergs’ in the drains for example !
The paving over of absorbent front gardens for parking.
A ‘tipping point’ when there is a down pour.
Of coarse there is always a conspiracy of silence between the media & politicians on such subjects.
In just one current London Borough, Enfield, (amalgamation of Enfield, Southgate and Edmonton in 1967) there used to be several fords, even as late as – I think – the 1920s. Until remedial work was done to the River Lea (dredging, deepening ‘the cut’ and the building of concrete sides to the banks) it used to flood roads in the Borough after periods of wet weather followed by a cloudburst.
Chanel 4 + 1 tonight at 8pm Channel 4 News includes an item at 8.30pm by the new Climate Crisis Advisory Group where they include a plan to “re-freeze the Arctic” to reflect the disastrous warming, which they say is “feasible”. The Interviewer did not question anything…… Worth a look!
I’ve hit upon a useful thing to say to any climate alarmist, whether individual or the likes of the BBC, and that is this :-
“The trouble with your point of view is that you are only viewing the climate based on your very limited life span as opposed to considering the long term climate patterns and changes over the past 4.5 billion years!”
Background reading from 53 years ago
Hydrology for Urban land Planning
A Guidebook on the Hydrologic Effects of Urban Land Use
By Luna B. Leopold
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 554 – 1968
Click to access report.pdf
Paul, David Archer of Newcastle University has done a lot of work on historical flash floods in England. A key paper is David Archer et al (2019), Historical Flash Floods in England, in the Journal of Flood Risk Management, 12, 2019 – you can download a full pdf. In short his conclusion is that there are ‘flood rich’ and ‘flood poor’ periods and also regional variations in trends. There is no clear, steady trend in such floods. There is other work by David Archer that you can find on the internet related to themes such as ‘Flooding from intense Rainfall’ and on his blog published at http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/flooding/ … A quote from this is compelling ” In compiling this chronology, event by event, I was struck by the variability of occurrence by year and by decade, which did not fit with the concept of more intense rainfall in a world warming with climate change….The most frequent and really damaging flash floods tended to concentrate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and there were fewer events in many of the later decades of the twentieth century”
Meanwhile yet another of my neighbours – the blue van man – (who is on a spacious corner block) has just converted his garden into paved parking space.
This also involved the loss of several trees and hedges.
The flooding in the picture is symptomatic of a blocked-up drainage system.
London has pumping stations that are supposed to empty such floodwaters into the Thames. To ensure that the pumps do not get clogged-up with trash, they are fitted with trash-screens. But then the trash-screen clearing machines breakdown (because they are old) and the trash-screen itself gets clogged. So, even in fine weather the sewers back-up – far upstream into NW London.
This is what real flash flooding looks like . . . https://youtu.be/kYUpkPTcqPY
This is the first time I’ve disagreed with you Paul. Christopher Booker would never have been ‘sat on a bus’ in 1975, he would have been sitting or seated. You’re so good at scrutinizing climate data, so scrutinize proper English too!
Is that true? Or did you hear it on the BBC?
All these extreme weather events in the past 2 years occurred when human emissions to the atmosphere were at an historic low, due to the pandemic and the success of policies to cut Carbon emissions.
So what we need to do is get Ryanair flying again and Northern Ireland will cool down, and all that extreme weather will go away.
“some hospitals had to ask patients to stay away after they lost power.”
This may be a portent of things to come:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/greenernhs/a-net-zero-nhs/
Our aim is to be the world’s first net zero national health service.
We have set two targets:
For the emissions we control directly (the NHS Carbon Footprint), we will reach net zero by 2040, with an ambition to reach an 80% reduction by 2028 to 2032;
For the emissions we can influence (our NHS Carbon Footprint Plus), we will reach net zero by 2045, with an ambition to reach an 80% reduction by 2036 to 2039.
Some would argue we already have a Net Zero Health Service.
There are many rich archives of flooding in the UK:
There is a record here for flooding in the Severn Valley going back to 1258:
http://www.geography.org.uk/download/GA_BewdleyFloodHistory.doc
eg. 1258: 4th June: “a terrible storm of wind accompanied by torrents of rain fell on and raised all the waters of the Severn from Shrewsbury to Bristol to a degree that has not been seen in our times.”
The British Hydrochronology Association has this site, https://www.cbhe.hydrology.org.uk/index.php
There are written records for every river catchment in the country, showing drought years and flood years and it is searchable. A common theme in flood and drought archives is “never in living memory”. In the “current climate”, everything is “unprecedented”.
More FUD from the BBC today…
UK already undergoing disruptive climate change
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst
Published 1 hour ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57988023
South east England got a soaking and south west Scotland hit 29C for a few hours 🙄
Well I dunno! Not really listening to the beeb any more -aided by their coverage of the Games. However despite ALL the Hype about Yello warnings for our area, ( Ullapool to Elgin,) we’ve had little rain to speak of and when the Sun peeped thru’ well it was very hot on the shoulders for a short moment: -that’s what the Sun does in Summer and especially when it is “Lensed” thru the clouds. A thermometer on my back would have read substantially MORE than 29C, …. soh? it is summer…. these stupid city reporters – don’t even know where the Sun don’t shine!
Oh Yeah? Huh, the new GBN around 10am is ALSO promoting it, it seems. That young bloke replacing Coliin Brazier seems to be towing the Party Line on CC and I noted on Gov Covid “rubbish”, too. I don’t think the GBN programs are doing what was made out to be doing – asking Questions ?
I have a particular interest in the social history of WW1 and in reading numerous books on the subject have come across many comments on the weather of the time,
For example. the first winter in the trenches was reported as the coldest for 50 years.
The Battle of the Somme was scheduled to start on 28th June 196 but “t…..he weather was fine on Sunday and Monday but gradually deteriorated to chilly, showery weather, unseasonable for late June. The attack was postponed for 48 hours”
Of course the weather reported only affected a small part of northern France, just as the flash floods this week only affected parts of London. The climate change zealots always want to imply that bad weather is throughout the UK. The MSM sensationalise any bad weather using terms like the Big Freeze when there is snowfall in a part of the UK. The BBC et al report as though there have never been, until now, summer nights when it is too hot to sleep.
It is only a couple of years ago that flooding on the Somerset levels was being touted as due to Climate Change yet now dredging has been restarted and it has still rained – no repeat of the flooding!