Britain has seen a rise in weird weather—and it's only just the beginning

Like the proverbial frog squatting unconcerned in a pan of water as the temperature is slowly racked up, a significant chunk of humankind still fails to grasp that the end result of ever climbing temperatures will be our annihilation. Compared to earthquakes, volcanic blasts and hurricanes, climate breakdown driven by global heating is a slow-onset catastrophe. Never mind that our world is almost certainly heating at a faster rate than at any time in its history—for most of us it is simply too slow to notice.

For more than 200 years, we have been pumping carbon dioxide, the main planet-heating gas, into the atmosphere in ever greater quantities. In all that time, the global average temperature has climbed by a little over one degree. In the UK, the benchmark Central England Temperature (CET) has risen by around 1.5 degrees Celsius over the same period. Neither rise may sound like much, but bear in mind that the Earth's climate system is so sensitive that just eight or nine degrees separates the deepest ice age from a hothouse world with dramatically reduced polar ice sheets and sea levels 10 metres higher than they are now.

Nonetheless, the smidgen of additional warmth that accrues each year goes largely unheeded by anyone who isn't a weather forecaster or climate scientist. What does attract our attention, however, is the increasingly savage weather that piggybacks on global heating, which is beginning to open our eyes to the breakdown of our once (relatively) stable climate.

Of course, there have always been weather extremes, but in recent years these extremes have become much more frequent—and they are in danger of becoming the new normal.

This is now obvious to anyone who follows global headlines. As I write, wildfires have destroyed a couple of million acres in California and continue to rage. Out in the tropical Atlantic, two major storms formed in a single day in what is already an astonishingly active hurricane season, while in India and Nepal, monsoon floods have taken a thousand lives and counting. Predictions warn of more of the same, only worse. As far back as 1997, geophysical and climate hazards affected as many as 1 in 30 people worldwide. This figure has only continued to climb. It can only be a matter of time before extreme weather on our overheating planet impinges on everyone every year.

Here in the UK, as the heat builds remorselessly, we will continue to experience familiar extreme weather—notably floods and gales—only at even more disastrous heights. Even now, it is rare for a year to pass without severe flooding happening somewhere: see Yorkshire and the Midlands from 2019 and 2020; Cumbria and Lancashire from 2015 to 2016; Somerset from 2013 to 2014, and so on. Our river systems are out of kilter with the new, heavier, precipitation regime and it will need more than ever higher defences to tackle the problem.

The trend towards more powerful windstorms is also becoming apparent, with Storms Eleanor, Lorenzo, Ciara and Dennis causing mayhem across the UK during the last three years alone. Even summer no longer brings any respite, with Storms Ellen and Francis battering the country just last month.

In the decades to come, the real worry, however, is that though extreme weather events have so far been rare visitors to the UK, they will become more common and exact greater tolls on lives and livelihoods. As longer and more intense heatwaves and droughts spawn tinderbox conditions and colossal thunderstorms, so more wildfires and tornadoes will follow.

The 30,000 acres of mainly northern moorland burned in 2019 is without doubt the harbinger of worse to come. So too is the powerful tornado that cut a 7km-long swathe through Birmingham in 2005. Tornadoes have always been a rarity in the UK, but higher temperatures will make them more common, and more deadly, wanderers.

Storm surges funnelled into the North Sea by gales are also a growing worry. The infamous 1953 surge cause massive east coast flooding and took more than 2,000 lives in the UK and the Netherlands. Defences and forecasting are better now, but higher sea levels and more powerful winds mean that future surges will be far higher. The most recent surge in 2013 saw flood defences overtopped and the Lincolnshire town of Boston inundated. It is unlikely to be the last time.

Our bodies, then, may not be sensitive enough to detect the—so far—small rise in temperature that global heating has wrought, but our senses cannot fail to register the wilder weather that is taking an ever greater toll on people and property. Take my word for it, we haven't seen anything yet.