Transcripts For BBCNEWS Weather World 20240713

Now, in a year that saw the planets hottest month on record, nick miller and Sarah Keith Lucas reflect on the most significant meteorological events of 2019 in weather world. This time on weather world, were in cambridge, where right here during 2019s record setting european heatwave, the temperature was the highest the uks ever recorded. At the uks hottest weather station, ill discover how you go about accurately recording temperature, and ill be finding out whats behind another year of record heatwaves. The science is overwhelmingly clear that the cause of this Climate Change is our activities as humans putting more and more Carbon Dioxide and other Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere. And im at Cambridge University, where a new look at pioneering Data Collected in the 1970s is revealing the real impact Climate Change is having on our melting ice sheet today. Also on weather world, 2019s biggest storms, from devastation in the bahamas hit by its most powerful hurricane, to the fire ravaging parts of our world. And climates in crisis as a swedish teenager becomes the face of public protest. How the 2010s became a decade like no other for our climate. Cambridge, famous for its university, its scientists, its punting on the river and now its heat because of this. This weather station, which onjuly the 25th, 2019, recorded a new, National High temperature for the uk of 38. 7 degrees celsius. Now, in a year when Climate Change has become increasingly labelled a climate crisis, that may be an unwanted accolade, but nonetheless, its a record that now cambridge holds. But how do you go about verifying a temperature like that, accepting it in a National Record . Well, philjohnson from the met office was involved in that process on that day. Phil, tell me what you did. Well, hi, nick. Well, first of all we had a good indication that record temperatures would be broken. From there we could actually start monitoring temperatures in real time. However, part of our network is done by volunteers such as at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. And so it wasnt until the following day where we heard that the temperature had been broken. We needed to come in here and first of all check that the actual instrument had been read correctly. Then we performed a comparison or verification with a precision thermometer to make sure the instrument was actually performing correctly. And in addition, we needed to check the environment, the surroundings where the screen is. And is the instrument actually deployed correctly . Is it exposed correctly . And there is a thermometer inside this box. But tell me why its enclosed like this. We want to measure the air temperature. If the thermometer was actually outside, then well be heating the thermometer directly from the sun and so that would give a false reading, the same as if you put a thermometer on the wall, youre actually measuring the temperature of the wall and not the air temperature. And theres a very good reason you dont want to open this box today to show us the thermometer inside. Its a very, very sensitive piece of equipment. As soon as we open the door we actually may get a little spike in the temperature, which we cant accept for our readings. And the principles of recording heat like this are the same anywhere in the world. Indeed, the World Meteorological 0rganisation, they provide standards where we should measure temperatures. For the met office our standard is 125 centimetres above ground level, normally above grass, some countries are a little bit higher, but generally we are within their guidelines. Phil, really good to talk to you. Thank you. And it wasntjust in the uk that heat was hitting the headlines in 2019, farfrom it. Australia in november and its largest city, sydney, is almost lost in smoke as multiple fires burn in dry, hot, windy conditions, producing catastrophic fire danger. Firefighters face near impossible conditions as temperatures soar. And worse is to come in december as the country endures its hottest day on record. In august, the world watched as a Record Number of wildfires burned in the amazon amid a political storm about blame. In the usa in october, californias largest fire of the season so far rages north of san francisco. Earlier injune, the city had its hottest three days ever recorded in summer. And it was a series of astonishing summer heatwaves in europe that shattered records across multiple countries, including here in france injune as the temperature reached nearly 46 celsius. Then injuly, new National Records were set in germany, belgium, the netherlands and the uk. And as the year came to a close, the World Meteorological 0rganisation said the last decade was set to be the planets hottest on record. Joining me now to talk about all things heat here at Cambridge University Botanic Garden is dr emily shuckburgh, Cambridge Universitys chief climate scientist. So, what stands out for you from whats been happening heat wise around the world in 2019 . Well, i think obviously what stands out for me beyond all else is the record temperatures that were recorded here in these gardens back in the summer. 38. 7 degrees celsius. And the really significant thing about heat of that level, though, is the effect that it has on peoples lives and particularly on vulnerable people, either the very young or the very old. And weve seen spikes in death rates particularly amongst the elderly in the heatwaves that weve seen in recent years. And thats a significant concern. And in terms of those record temperatures and how they fit into the heatwaves, is that something which is going to happen more frequently or is already happening more frequently . We are seeing it already. So, heatwaves in some parts of the world that used to happen maybe a couple of times a century before any Climate Change, were now seeing it occurring every few years. And as the temperatures increase globally, those frequencies will increase still further. Whats driving the heat and the increasing heat that were getting . The science is overwhelmingly clear that the cause of this Climate Change is our activities as humans putting more and more Carbon Dioxide and other Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere. So, today our Carbon Dioxide levels are coming close to being 50 higher than they were before the start of the industrial revolution. And that has driven globally temperatures to be more than one degree celsius warmer than that time. And that might sound like quite a small number, but the implications of that are really significant increases in the risk of extreme weather events. Good to talk to you. Well be back with you again later in the programme. Now its time to cross to sara, whos looking at whats going on with temperatures at the other end of the extreme. A warming world is still capable of extreme cold and back injanuary 2019 in the usa, chicago recorded its lowest temperature in 3a years, with minus 30 degrees celsius. You see this on my glasses. This is notjust fog, but frost. Its ridiculous out here and its going to get worse. Where you expect it to be cold temperatures are on the rise. In fact, the arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and in 2019 recorded its second smallest sea ice extent in the satellite era. But the arctic hit the headlines for Something Else in 2019. Fire. Millions of hectares of forest burned within the Arctic Circle in scenes described by experts as unprecedented. Higher temperatures and a greater frequency of lightning are partly to blame. In order to better understand whats been happening in our polar regions during 2019, ive come here to the Scott Polar Research institute at the university of cambridge. Its the oldest dedicated Polar Research institute in the world. And professorjulian dowdeswell, is the director. So, julian, tell me a little bit about the work that goes on here. Our main expertise, i suppose, of where we put most of our resource is what we call the icy world and in particular, ice and environmental change. And of course, a huge amounts has changed since captain scott, shackleton and Edward Wilson first went into the interior of antarctica. Scotts First Expedition collected over 20 volumes of data concerning the antarctic at that time, which provides arguably the earliest baseline against which we can judge contemporary change in that part of the polar regions. And over that hundred years, how has our perception of and our relationship with the polar regions changed, because theyre very much at the forefront of our minds these days . When i started in the field as a doctoral student a0 years or so ago now, people thought that the polar regions were interesting, but a little bit divorced from the rest of the world, indeed from the rest of the Global Climate system. And now, of course, we know that absolutely is not the case. And, indeed, both the arctic and the antarctic are major drivers of the growth of the Global Climate system. The poles are just about as far away as you can get from the big, industrial, carbon emitting parts of the world. So why is it that the poles are quite so sensitive to Climate Change . The arctic is almost inarguably the most sensitive part of the whole Global Climate system. But in the last 20 or 30 years, theres been an enormous change in the summer sea ice cover in the arctic. In fact, a change from about eight million Square Kilometres per year to only about four and a half or five. And what you do by removing that ice by the end of the summer, because its slightly warmer in the arctic, is you change the reflectance of the surface very greatly and you swap something thats very bright and reflective for something thats much more like myjumper, for something thats really absorbent. That happens year on year. Each year, theres a bit less sea ice. Each year, the temperature is, of the water in particular, just a fraction warmer, which makes it more difficult the next year for the sea ice to form, thats a self reinforcing process. And that is the reason really that ice reflectance, that feedback, that is the main reason why the arctic is the most sensitive part of the whole Global Climate system. And 2019 has been another year of extreme weather around the world, from record breaking heatwaves, floods and also wildfires even to the north of the Arctic Circle. So what really stands out in 2019 in terms of whats going on at the poles . Fires are a big thing throughout the globe. And of course, they manifest themselves by things like black carbon in ice cores. And we can actually trace how those have changed over the decades. Over the past 800,000 years in the longest Antarctic Ice cores, we can see that co2 levels are very strongly coupled with temperature over successive glacial, interglacial cycles. Thank you so much, julian. And thinking about how we use historic ice data to look forward into the future, a little bit later in the programme ill be back looking at some newly available digitised ice data that is helping climate scientists map what could potentially happen to our climate in the future. Now for some of your weather watcher pictures, starting with these scenes from november when parts of england suffered severe flooding in a deluge which contributed to south yorkshire, nottinghamshire and lincolnshire seeing their wettest autumn on record. But the autumn rainfall wasnt evenly distributed across the uk. In fact, parts of northern and western scotland were much drier than average in autumn, and exceptionally dry in november. Become a bbc weather watcher by signing up online at bbc. Co. Uk weatherwatchers, and you could be in the running for pic of the season, which in autumn was won by tonys view of the stormy seas in wales. Still to come on weather world underwater why a warmer world could also mean a wetter world. Now on weather world, some of 2019s biggest storms, starting with Hurricane Dorian seen approaching the bahamas in september. The few images taken as the category five storm hit paint a terrifying picture as a flooding storm surge ploughs across the abacho islands. The aftermath is apocalyptic. The near complete devastation here at Marsh Harbour on great abaco is a product of the strongest storm ever to have hit the bahamas and one of the most powerful on record in the atlantic. In the western pacific in october, hagibis is the strongest typhoon in 60 years to hitjapan. The storm leaves behind widespread damage, including to these bullet trains swamped by the floodwaters. Earlier in march, cyclone idai is one of the strongest ever to hit africa. This is what it did to the city of beira in mozambique. Idai is the southern hemispheres second deadliest Tropical Cyclone on record. And in may, cyclone fani ploughs into the east coast of india. Its the strongest storm here in 20 years. But countless lives were saved thanks to a Mass Evacuation in advance of the storm. No Tropical Cyclone in italy, but a storm surge all the same combines with the venice high tide in november to produce the worst flooding here in over 50 years. St marks basilica was said to have suffered grave damage, with its crypt completely flooded. In the uk, 2019 has brought bouts of severe flooding, most recently in november across parts of yorkshire and the midlands as record autumn rainfall sent some rivers to their highest levels ever recorded. Chanting during 2019, public protest and direct action about Climate Change reached new levels. Chanting spain in december, and thousands demonstrate as madrid hosts the United Nations climate conference. Arriving by train, teenage Swedish Environmental activist Greta Thunberg has a police escort, such is the interest in someone whos become the face of the climate protest movement. Addressing the conference, she said not enough is being done to combat the climate crisis. To stay below 1. 5 degrees, we need to keep the carbon in the ground. 0nly setting up distant dates and saying things which give the impression that action is under way will most likely do more harm than good, because the changes required are still nowhere in sight. Well, im back here at Cambridge Universitys Botanic Garden with Cambridge Universitys chief climate scientist, dr emily shuckburgh. Emily, we talked earlier about how warm the world has become. But in that video, we saw lots of rain and flooding. So how does this warmer, wetter world fit together . Yes, it might sound counter intuitive, mightnt it . But, actually, a warmer atmosphere can hold more water in it. Thats just simple physics as to how that happens. And that means that theres more, that its wetter, essentially, to be able to rain down and heavy rainfall events. And thats the essential reason why weve seen more and more flooding here in the uk, but also flooding events around the world as well. And weve seen really powerful hurricanes and typhoons as well. Is that something that also fits into Climate Change science . Mm, the way in which Climate Change interacts with hurricanes and cyclones is quite complex. But in terms of the damage caused by those hurricanes and cyclones, its very clear that much of that damage is exacerbated by Climate Change. So weve just talked about how Climate Change can cause heavier rainfall and a lot of the damage associated with cyclones, this comes from the flooding, the storm surges that weve seen associated with those. So heavier rainfall, greater storm surges, but also Sea Level Rise across the world. As the seas have been rising, those storms are going to penetrate that much further inland, causing that much more damage. And amidst all of that background of heat, flooding and storms, 2019 has really been a year of political activism, public activism as well when it comes to Climate Change, more awareness about that. Weve seen young people around the world really rising up and saying that our future is at stake and their future really is at stake. Its decisions that we all make over the coming decade that will determine notjust our childrens future, but their grandchildrens and their grandchildrens future as well. Thanks for talking to us in this lovely setting on such a sunny day. Thank you a uk climate scientist and his team at Reading University are helping us to visualise how much the world is warming with these climate stripes here showing each years average Global Temperatures since the 1880s in a coloured stripe, clearly progressing from blue to red over time as temperatures have warmed. Bbc weather presenter ben rich takes a look at how you can look for a climate stripe to show the temperature trends where you are. This is the show your stripes website, and on the home page, were greeted by the same Global Climate stripes weve just been looking at. But the great thing about this website is we can delve a little deeper. We can look at patterns in different places around the world. And its quite simple to do. If i click on region and then select africa, for example, i can then choose a country. In this case, im going to choose ethiopia. And these are the climate stripes for ethiopia. This data goes back to 1901. It comes from berkeley earth. And you can see this pattern of things getting warmer over the years, and in some parts of the world, we can dig even deeper than that. The usa is a great example. If i click on region, choose north america, then find the usa, were able to select different states of the us. If i choose florida, again, here are the climate stripes. This data comes from noaa, the us weather and climate service. This data goes all the way back to 1895, as youd expect with a smaller area, there is a bit more variability some warmer years earlier on, some cooler ones later on. But generally speaking, you can see that warming pattern, and that is the striking thing about this website. Basically, wherever you look around the world, you will find that trend of accelerated warming in recent years. Im back at the Scott Polar Research institute at the university of cambridge and professor julian dowdswell. Youre going to take me back in time to look at some of the research that was done here almost half a century ago. And look at why its so relevant to whats happening today. After the end of the second world war, the surface of the Antarctic Ice sheet began to be mapped, but there was no knowledge at that time at all of what the thickness of the Antarctic Ice sheet was. It was realised by the late 50s that ice was semi transparent to radio waves at certain frequencies. And what that means is if you fly a transmitter and a receiver at that frequency, this is the atmosphere beneath it, its the ice surface, and beneath it is the ice surface, which we can see as a very strong reflector. And then some of the megahertz energy from the transmitter actually penetrates through from the ice surface, through the ice itself to the wrath of more diffuse bed and, therefore, that energy is reflected again back to the receiver. And that allows us for the first time to actually map notjust the surface, but the thickness of the Antarctic Ice sheet. So, thinking back to this data that was gathered almost half a century ago, technology mustve come on a long way since then. So, how do you get this into a kind of format that we can use and compare to our modern records now . Well, technology has changed a lot. And of course, were in the digital age. So we, together with colleagues at Stanford University in the us, have realised that we can actually redigitise these old film records at very, very high resolution. And this we actually did last year with the help of the hollywood film industry. We remastered, effectively, these films in analogue form into digital form. We can compare our data from the 1960s and the early 1970s with modern satellite and airborne measurements from just the past decade or so. And then we can compare things such as elevation change and thickness change. So, when youre comparing what the ice was like a0 or 50 years ago to whats happening now, have there been any surprises in this data . 0h, always. I mean, in some ways, things havent changed in some places, and in other areas, things have changed much more than we expected. For example, there are channels on the underside of some of the floating margins of the ice sheet. We call these floating ice shelves that, in fact, have stayed in the same position and about the same size through the whole 40 to 50 year period. And thats interesting because it shows in those cases the lack of change. And there are other areas where we compare modern thickness with the thickness 30 or a0 years ago, and there we see changes of over 100 metres. So, what this suggests is that some parts of the antarctic, as one might expect, are actually more sensitive and some are less sensitive to external climatic stimuli. Thank you so much forjoining us. And for talking us through some of the really fascinating and important work thats going on here. A great pleasure. November 2013, and typhoon haiyan bears down on the philippines. The deadliest in a decade of more powerful Tropical Cyclones. As we enter the 2020s, we asked university of reading climate scientist dr Nicolas Bellouin for his personal take on the 2010s, a remarkable decade of weather and change for our climate. This has been an extraordinary decade in terms of weather and climate. And many records have been broken, many kinds of records across the planet. This has been a warm decade. Indeed, seven out of the ten warmest years have happened since 2010, and 2016 is the warmest year on record ever. That brings heatwaves as theyve been recurring in many parts of the globe. And with that comes the risk of fires, which have peaked in brazil and have been very strong in australia, in california and in south east asia, but also in sweden, which recorded record fire in 2018. Precipitation has also hit records. China has hit its wettest in 2016 and the us in 2018. Flash flooding is now recurring often in africa and in france, italy and spain. So, the question for me as a climate scientist or perhaps more generally for us as a society is whether this is a transition towards an even warmer world or a call to action to avoid further . The effects of Severe Weather can sometimes hit with little warning. In the uk in march, watch this man narrowly escape disaster as strong winds caused part of a building to collapse. And sometimes we can bring near disaster on ourselves. In november, this man and child are lucky to escape with just a soaking as big waves hit the coastline of the isle of wight. And finally, while a storm can seem like the worst of weather, it is for others pure joy. Australia in november and it rains in new south wales. In a state hit by severe heat, droughtand fire, the reaction is understandably enthusiastic. And thats it for this time on weather world from cambridge. Theres more to see online, including highlights from our previous programmes at bbc. Co. Uk weatherworld. Lets see what a new year a new decade of weather brings. It will bring more weather world. So until were back, keep checking the forecast. Hello there. It doesnt look like were going to see any snowfall for Christmas Day, but with it being cold, there could be a little bit of early frost, which might make you feel a little bit festive for a while. The reason for the cold weather with the sunshine as well as this ridge of High Pressure for Christmas Day, which will be short lived because it will be replaced during boxing day with this area of low pressure to bring us a spell of wet and windy weather. The cold air from Christmas Day will be pushed northwards and itll be replaced as the wind and rain moves in with this milder air and, indeed, itll be sticking around, even as we head on into the end of the week and also for the weekend. But for Christmas Day morning, its going to be chilly. Temperatures up and down the country just around 1 or 2 degrees. Many rural areas will be around freezing, so a touch of frost likely, but with generally clear skies overhead. We should see quite a bit of sunshine through the day. A little bit of patchy cloud perhaps for north west england, perhaps into northern and western scotland. A few showers as well brushing the north coast of scotland. Later in the day, well start to see the breeze picking up across the south and the west, along with some hazy sunshine as the high cloud starts to roll in. But most places will see the sunshine. Its going to be a chilly day, single figure values for most. Certainly a chillier feel to things across the south. And then towards the later part of the day, its possible we could start to see some dense fog patches developing across northern, central and Eastern England for a while. Bear that in mind if you are heading out on the roads. It should be short lived, though, because the breeze begins to pick up through the night, it will tend to lift. Itll be turning wet and windier across the south west as that weather system arrives, turning milder as well by the end of the night. But still quite a chilly one across the north and the east. So, low pressure then sweeping across the country for boxing day, bringing strong winds and heavy rain. That rain will be already across northern ireland, wales, the south west of england early on. Perhaps a dry start, perhaps a little bit of brightness in the north and the east before the wind and the rain sweeps in there. Could see a little bit of transient snow over the Higher Ground of northern england, certainly across the scottish mountains as that rain bumps into the cold air, but itll be turning milder across the south and the west with temperatures reaching double figures here. Still single values in the north. And it turns even milder as we end the week and head on into the weekend with temperatures well above the seasonal average. Thats all from me. Have yourself a very lovely christmas. This is bbc news. Welcome if youre watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. Im mike embley. Our top stories pope francis celebrates Midnight Mass at the vatican, calling on the faithful not to abandon gods love at christmas because of the churchs failings. Translation christmas reminds us that god continues to love us, even the worst of us. God does not love you because you think and act the right way, his love is unconditional. Russian and turkish Officials Say theyre trying to stop the escalation of fighting in the syrian province of idlib, but the number of dead keeps on rising. Hundreds of families are spending Christmas Day in emergency shelters, as australias bushfires continue to burn out of control