Britain under attack

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 609.

Climate change

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On 10 August 2003, a momentous event occurred at Heathrow airport just outside London. There, a temperature of 37.9°C was recorded. This may not look an especially significant figure to you, but to the British it had great psychological impact. This is because many of them still think in the old Fahrenheit scale -and 37.9°C is 100.2°F. It was the first time in British history that the temperature had passed the 100°F mark.

Since that day, temperatures of more than 100°F have been recorded several times in several different places in Britain. People have become generally aware of climate change. In Britain, there seem to be three trends: (1) like the rest of Europe, temperatures are generally rising; (2) the difference between the warmer, drier south-east and the cooler, wetter north-west is becoming more pronounced; (3) extreme weather conditions are becoming more frequent - so perhaps the British will start to be more prepared for them!

Some people worry that Britain's political sovereignty is in danger from the European Union and from Scottish and Welsh independence movements. This may or may not be true. But what is certainly true is that Britain itself - the island - is in very real danger from the sea. For one thing, global warming means rising sea levels everywhere, so that low-lying coastal areas are threatened. For another, the Atlantic waves which hit Britain's north, west and south coasts are getting taller. This means they have more energy than before - energy with which to strip sand from beaches, undermine cliffs and damage coastal defences. Finally, the east coast, although safe from those Atlantic waves, is actually sinking anyway (as the south-east corner of Britain tilts downwards). Every year, little bits of it vanish into the North Sea. Sometimes the land slips away slowly. But at other times it slips away very dramatically (as when in 1992 the guests of the Holbeck hotel, built on a clifftop near Scarborough, had to leave their rooms in a hurry; the cliff was collapsing into the sea - and so was their hotel).

London is in special danger because it is also vulnerable to flooding through tidal surges along the River Thames. One in the seventeenth century left the Westminster area under nearly two metres of water. In 1953 a tidal surge killed 300 people in the Thames Estuary to the east of London. Realization of the scale of the disaster that would have been caused if this surge had reached London provoked the construction of the Thames Barrier, completed in 1983. Since then, it has been used to protect London from flooding an average of three times every year. It is widely thought that the Barrier will soon be inadequate. New defences are being considered.