100 Years of Climate Change: Part 5

In my little area of the world, we’re enjoying something of a mini heat wave at the moment, with temperatures in this neighbourhood set to reach 27 degrees Celsius tomorrow. However, we’re also assured that, in true classic English summer style, it will all end on Tuesday in a crescendo of thunderstorms, hail, driving rain and flash floods. I’m looking forward to that, in a way, as we haven’t had a decent thunderstorm in ages.

And talking of which… On Saturday 4th June the Derby took place at Epsom, as it does at around this time every year, and the weather was pleasant, according to an account by MeteoGroup – fine, warm, rather breezy. It has not always been thus – the MeteoGroup article mentions previous Derby Days when the weather was a lot less nice – heavy snow showers in 1867, a gale in 1830, torrential rain in 1891.

And in 1911 – there was the mother of all thunderstorms.

A hundred years ago, the Epsom Derby was held on 31st May, a Wednesday. It had been a hot day, and in the late afternoon, just after the conclusion of the race, the weather broke. It rained, it hailed and it thundered, several people dying in the vicinity of the racecourse itself, under a fusilade of lightning strikes. This was no ordinary storm. A total of 15cm of hail fell to earth over the Downs, and the London Weather website tells us that 91mm of rain was recorded on this day at Banstead in Surrey.

Multiple storm centres converged on the London area, thunder shaking the houses and rain flooding into cellars and basements, also causing landslides which blocked railway lines near Merstham and Coulsdon, a few miles north and south-east of Banstead, respectively. At Sutton, a ferocious lightning storm killed or injured several people, and hailstones up to 2 inches in diameter smashed down, stripping the leaves from trees and shrubs.

Juliet Nicolson, author of The Perfect Summer: Dancing into Shadow in 1911, takes up the story:

As the race-goers left the Epsom stands the sun was just visible through the veil of clouds, a shimmering ball of hot metal. Early that evening the stable lads taking the horses for a final gallop on the Downs heard a distant rumble, and as dusk began to settle there was a stupendous crash, followed by lightning which landed in flat white patches, irradiating rooms with a ‘ghastly illumination’. Hailstones the size of sovereigns began to fall, and rain hissed and whipped against windowpanes. Forty-five cars travelling back to London had to be abandoned between Epsom and Sutton. Four horses were killed by lightning that evening and seventeen people died, including a stable lad in a van at the course, two policemen, and Mrs Hester, a grave-digger’s wife, who had slipped out to the village churchyard to take her husband a cup of tea as he worked. She died in front of him, crushed by the graveyard wall that collapsed under the force of lightning and fell on top of her.

Now imagine if this had happened in 2011, instead… There is no doubt that such a violent and destructive thunderstorm would be held up as an example of just the sort of extreme weather event we can expect to see more of, due to man-made global warming. There would be sombre articles in the Guardian, and wise people like Bill McKibben telling us it was a perfect example of the way we are “making the Earth a more dynamic and violent place.”

Well, it might certainly look that way, to someone who was completely oblivious to the historical record.

Via the very helpful Google News function on the internet, I’m now looking at a page from a New Zealand newspaper called the Grey River Argus. It’s dated 1st June 1911, and there’s an article about the Derby Day storm, which provides a very brief but fascinating account of the event and its consequences:

A spell of tropical heat culminated in a series of thunderstorms in the Home counties. The streets in many places were flooded. The Epsom crowd returning from the races were in a sorry plight. The lightning killed two policemen, and three other racegoers. Although seven deaths are reported already, many were severely injured by lightning. Two city churches were struck. The underground railway was flooded and the system short circuited the water [sic]. There were extraordinary scenes at Bostock’s gungle [sic] at the White City. The thunder infuriated the pumas, who attacked and mauled the lady trainer. The pavilion was crowded with people escaping from the torrential rain, and there was great excitement. The trainer was rescued by the attendants using crowbars.

The article writer is referring to Bostock’s Jungle, which was a sort of travelling menagerie and wild-animal show that was popular at the time. I’m wondering what became of the lady trainer, by the way – did she survive and recover from her ordeal? What became of the pumas, for that matter?

I suppose I shall never know.

UPDATE

Weather expert Philip Eden quotes an even more dramatic passage found by John Bird, a local meteorologist, in a contemporary newspaper:

It would have taxed the skill of the finest word painter to describe the scene at the height of the storm. It was an inferno of water, mud, thunder, lightning and hail. Innumerable cars hors de combat, horses plunging with fright, a confusing heap of figures inextricably jumbled together in narrow roadways, half-drowned pedestrians, drenched cyclists, terrified women and children, and battalions of men helpless against the mighty powers of nature in one of here savage moods.

1911 – “Global Weirding” Then and Now

Last week I read a couple of rather dramatic articles about recent weather events (hat tip to Jeremy who runs the Make Wealth History website – he’s not an AGW sceptic but publishes much that is of interest to believers and sceptics alike.)

The first is this rather scary piece by John Vidal of the Guardian – Warning: extreme weather ahead.

Drought zones have been declared across much of England and Wales, yet Scotland has just registered its wettest-ever May. The warmest British spring in 100 years followed one of the coldest UK winters in 300 years. June in London has been colder than March. February was warm enough to strip on Snowdon, but last Saturday it snowed there.

Welcome to the climate rollercoaster, or what is being coined the “new normal” of weather. What was, until quite recently, predictable, temperate, mild and equable British weather, guaranteed to be warmish and wettish, ensuring green lawns in August, now sees the seasons reversed and temperature and rainfall records broken almost every year. When Kent receives as much rain (4mm) in May as Timbuktu, Manchester has more sunshine than Marbella, and soils in southern England are drier than those in Egypt, something is happening.

And so it goes. Droughts, mega heat waves, floods, tornadoes, the signs are all there. Something is happening. And while no scientist can point to an individual weather event and blame man-made climate change, “many argue that these phenomena are textbook examples of the kind of impact that can be expected in a warming world.”

The second article is an op-ed in the Washington Post by climate campaigner Bill McKibben, entitled A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!

Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

And so it goes. When Bill says don’t make connections between these extreme weather events, of course, he’s being ironical, in a rather heavy-handed way, and meaning do please make connections between these tornado outbreaks and that it is vitally important to go ahead and link the lot of them (and much more besides) to man-made climate change.

On reading these and similar articles (and, for my sins, I’ve read plenty of them over recent years), it is difficult to avoid the impression that the climate system of planet Earth is falling apart at the seams, like a person on the edge of some sort of devastating nervous and physical breakdown. At this point, one might be forgiven for wondering how many months this can all continue, before the entire world spirals into an insane, chaotic, flood-drenched, drought-scorched, tornado-battered, lightning-blasted, freezing, blazing, melting, belching, squelching inferno of total and utter weather-related doom, which will threaten to make the scariest of Roland Emmerich’s disaster movies seem like the most sedate and uneventful of teddy bears’ picnics by comparison.

With these articles in mind, what sort of typical year might we expect to have in future? What kinds of extreme weather events and accompanying humanitarian disasters can we anticipate, once out-of-control “global weirding” has tightened its grip?

Perhaps the following scenario can give us a few hints.

- In March, tropical cyclones devastate coastal towns in Queensland, Australia, and sink a large passenger ship with all hands.

- At the end of May, a violent thunderstorm creates havoc in southern England, killing 17 people.

- Over the summer, the river Yangtze in China floods, causing an estimated 100,000 deaths, creating a vast lake, 80 miles long and 35 miles wide, and also creating 3.7 million “climate refugees”.

- July brings a crippling 11-day heat wave in the north-eastern US, causing almost 150 deaths in New York City alone and setting temperature records in some places that will stand for a century.

- Also in July, the Philippines endure record rainfall, with 46 inches falling in Baguio City over 24 hours, during a super typhoon.

- In England there is a summer heat wave, with temperature records broken in the east of England and in Epsom, milk shortages due to parched conditions, farming coming to a complete standstill in some parts, food rotting on the London docks and also the threat of civil unrest.

- In Ontario, Canada, an early spring and an abnormally dry summer leads to one of the most devastating forest fires ever recorded there.

- In August, an Atlantic hurricane causes great damage in Charleston, reducing houses and ships to matchwood and taking 17 lives.

- In southern Angola, this year marks the start of a period of almost unbelievable hardship, in which a total of 250,000 people will die from drought, famine, disease and forced labour.

- In Australia, some regions are at their driest for the entire century, with the start of a major period of drought, punctuated by one of the heaviest downpours ever recorded in Western Queensland.

- In November, there is a remarkable weather anomaly in the American mid-west, with many cities, such as Oklahoma City, recording record high temperatures and record lows all on the same day, and with blizzards, a dust storm and outbreaks of tornadoes thrown in.

A picture of things to come?

Actually, this was the year 1911, exactly a century ago.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that for many writers in the climate debate, history seems to have begun sometime in the late 1970s, with everything before that in a kind of climate limbo. But “global weirding” has always been with us! And 1911 wasn’t even particularly unusual, disaster-wise – the only reason I’m singling it out is that it was precisely 100 years ago. The “new normal” of weather extremes is actually not very new at all.

If the idea of dangerous man-made global warming had been prevalent at the time, what sort of newspaper articles the Edwardian counterparts of John Vidal and Bill McKibben would have written, I wonder?

And how many months or years might they have given the world, before things got even worse?

Gliese 581, Rogue Planets and Towel Day

Last month, there was some interesting news from the world of extrasolar planets – firstly, the publication of a new study in Astrophysical Journal Letters which suggested that a planet in the nearby Gliese 581 star system might be hospitable enough to support liquid water, and which thus highlighted the possibility of oceans, clouds, rainfall and all the perplexing and wonderful climatic complications we enjoy so much here on this planet.

Granted, the new evidence stems not from actual observations but from computer models, so a note of caution is perhaps in order, but even so, this news is rather heartening.

Gliese 581, like our own dear old solar system, is in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, just over 20 light years from us and in the constellation of Libra. Its star is a red dwarf, and to date, astronomers have determined that there are at least four and maybe even six planets in orbit around it.

The four planets astronomers think definitely exist are (from innermost to outermost) Gliese 581-e, Gliese 581-b, Gliese 581-c and Gliese 581-d. Apart from having stunningly imaginative names, the other things to note are that 1) there is no planet Gliese-a, as this is the red dwarf star itself (took me a while to figure this out) and 2) they are named in order of discovery, which is why the physical sequence goes confusingly from e through to d. (By the way, some scientists think Gliese 581 also has stars f and g, but these may not actually exist and so are, much like Schrödinger’s cat, in a sort of indeterminate state, which has to be rather worrying for the planets’ inhabitants, if any.)

The innermost is e, discovered in 2009; it appears to be small (about 1.7 times the mass of Earth) and scientists think it might also be rocky. It’s also probably very hot, as it is much closer to its star than is advisable for any sensible planet thinking of supporting life forms.

Next is b, the first to be discovered (in 2005), and this one’s about as big as Neptune.

After that comes c, discovered in 2007 and about 5 and a half times as massive as our world, thus in a category of planet called the “super-Earth”. Alas, it probably is not inhabited by super-Earthlings, because, like its neighbours e and b, it’s still a little too close to its parent star for comfort.

And then there’s d, another super-Earth and about the same size as c. Discovered in 2009, it is just on the edge of the “Goldilocks zone” where liquid water – and, therefore, life – might exist (and in fact it was this planet that was the subject of the recent study.) In 2009, a radio message was beamed towards Gliese-d by the Australians, in the hope that some sufficiently advanced Gliesans might intercept and decode it (and be friendly enough not to send us an invasion fleet by return of post.)

The reason I find all this rather encouraging is that if planets are very common in our universe – and the fact that we’ve managed to spot dozens of them only a few light years away suggests that they are – and if there are huge numbers of planets in the Goldilocks zone (which, again, seems quite possible), then somewhere, surely, there must be aliens. And maybe, just maybe, there are even a few ETs living in our own neighbourhood. I think it more than likely that they would only be analogues of Earthly life-forms such as algae or bacteria, so making small talk with them might be a little dull, but even so.

The other bit of planetary news I liked was the announcement from a joint Japanese/New Zealand astronomical survey that there are probably vast numbers of solitary planets which are not orbiting around stars but appear to be roaming around the galaxy all by themselves. Rogue planets! And hundreds of billions of them in this galaxy alone – twice as many as there are main-sequence stars, according to the astronomers. They would probably be very cold and dark indeed, and I’m somehow reminded of the home world of the Eddorians, supreme baddies in EE Doc Smith’s magnificent Lensman series of novels, who exist on an orphan planet which, in the stories, has arrived in this universe from another (and presumably far nastier) dimension.

Even if not inhabited by a frigid-blooded, poison-breathing race of monstrosities eager to bend the galaxy to their rule, these myriads of rogue planets could, I suppose, be considered at least hazards to navigation. Of course, that will only be a problem for us in the millennia to come, I suppose, once humanity develops faster-than-light travel, so we won’t need to worry about them for a while. Unless, of course, a rogue planet happens to show up in our solar system next year, to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar, let’s say – in which case, it might be an appropriate time to panic.

Panic, however, is not normally a very useful response, a fact that was recognised by the late Douglas Adams, who designed his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with large friendly letters on the cover which said quite clearly “Don’t Panic”. Which leads me to the other thing I wanted to mention, that a couple of weeks ago it was Towel Day, a sort of commemoration of Douglas Adams, and a celebration of the towel, which, according to the Guide, is “about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”

I had completely forgotten about this. But looking at my diary, I realise that by utter good fortune, I had indeed known where my towel was, on Towel Day. Because I had taken the opportunity to pop out of the office at lunchtime and go for a nice cool swim at my local sports centre.

My towel is a large, sturdy one, made of plain blue cotton. It lacks advanced nutritional features such as stripes containing protein, vitamin B and C complexes or wheatgerm extract, which would come in handy if I ever found myself trapped in the hold of a Vogon constructor ship, on the way to one of the neighbouring exo-planets we’ve been discovering of late. However, for something like a welcome dip in the pool on a warm Wednesday afternoon in May, it is just about perfect.