BBC’s Latest Crackpot Claim: Flash Floods Getting Worse Because…Climate

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.

Source: 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 goes 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 fivefold 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 links 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 currently 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 41.6 mm:

This, needless to say, is not an unusual occurrence.

In 1975, four times as much fell in the space of fewer than three hours over Hampstead. (Christopher Booker maintains that most of this fell in about 20 minutes, as he 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.

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