Are wetter winters and frequent flooding here to stay?

What’s Happening

Real talk: Many places across the UK have experienced their wettest January in more than 100 years.

Are wetter winters and frequent flooding here to stay? 10 hours ago Save Esme Stallard Climate and science reporter Save Ben Birchall/PA Wire Flooded fields near Burrowbridge in Somerset this month Areas across the UK from Cornwall to County Down have seen their wettest January on record continue with heavy rain in February. (we’re not making this up)

The deluge the country has been experiencing in the last week has been put down to a blocked weather pattern - a high pressure system over Scandinavia is preventing the wet weather from moving away.

The Details

The Met Office estimates that at current levels of global warming, wet winters like 2023/24 have gone from being once in 80-year events to once in 20 - and with further warming this could become even more frequent. This could have significant impacts for housing, transport and food supply.

One farmer in Somerset told the BBC that he was living on a “knife edge” as his crops were days away from rotting in the floodwater. Roads and homes flooded, 100 warnings issued, and more rain on the way One in four properties at flood risk by 2050 - report How to prepare for storms and cope with rough weather Wetter winters more common On Tuesday, more than 100 locations across the UK faced flood warnings and more than 300 homes had already succumbed to the flood waters, according to the Environment Agency (EA).

Why This Matters

The heavy and continuous days of rainfall follow a similar pattern to the last few years of wetter winters. Six of the ten wettest since records began nearly 250 years ago have been this century, according to the Met Office. The UKs rainfall is strongly influenced , but the trend towards wetter winters is in line with predictions from the UKs meteorological organisation.

The scientific community tends to find developments like this significant.

The Bottom Line

The UKs rainfall is strongly influenced , but the trend towards wetter winters is in line with predictions from the UKs meteorological organisation. Increased burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil over the last two centuries has dropped greenhouse gases like CO2 into the atmosphere, which have warmed our planet.

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