available information online and in the media, and storm naming reallyjust helps us to organise that advice into a single simple message which everyone can share. so, notjust the met office but also the bbc, the rest of the media, government, emergency services, and of course the public. there is plenty of evidence of this improving the effectiveness of warnings, which is really measured by people taking the right decisions and actions. so, when it comes to storm eunice in february, that combination of the naming of the storm and the red warning for here on the isle of wight and for the first time in london, how did that make a difference in perhaps preventing more loss of life? we do public surveys after each big weather event, and after storm eunice we asked hundreds of people about how they knew about the storm and the warnings and then what they did. and, for example, in south east england, we found that 99% of people were aware of the red warning,
that we have gone from literally the south east of australia burning to literally, the south east of australia flooding. so, the extremes that we have seen of lately, while they have been unprecedented, currently speaking, in the future, they will no longer be unprecedented they will be something more like normal. now, that is not to say that they will occur every single summer because especially in australia, we can flip from really dry conditions to really wet conditions within a matter of a couple of years but these events will look less extreme and more closer to normal because of how extreme future events will be. february in madagascar and cyclone batsirai is the second of five tropical weather systems to impact the island so far this year. thousands have lost their homes. entire villages have been swept away. many people have died. cyclones, the same type of storm as hurricanes, occurfrom november to april here. some go on to make landfall in mozambique, with flooding rain
caught on dashcam a lorry overturns in extreme winds in oxfordshire during storm eunice, the second and most powerful of three named storms to hit the uk in just one week. thankfully, the driver wasn t seriously hurt. another lucky escape in london, which was covered for the first time by a red weather warning. falling trees caused damage and widespread travel disruption, many people filming the storm s disruption themselves. man: oh, my god! i caught that on video! and even falling steeples an unusual impact of the storm on a church in somerset. an unlikely beneficiary of the storm livestreaming of planes battling the winds as they landed at heathrow attracted thousands of new viewers. and here on the coast of the isle of wight, almost invisible in the sea spray, a gust of 122 mph became the strongest ever recorded in england. this part of the coast
where the storms develop so that does start to suggest that winter stormy periods are becoming more frequent in the future. also, there is research into certain types of storms, and in particular the kind that can give us our very strongest winds of all, and it looks like these as well may become more frequent in the long term. more explosive cyclogenesis now, and this time with a snowstorm that slammed into the north east usa injanuary, giving boston its joint snowiest day on record. parts of northern japan had their snowiest january, the city of sapporo saw more than 60 centimetres in 2a hours, the snowiest day in records going back more than 20 years. not the normal view of a greek island but this is naxos injanuary. even in a warming world, there will be bouts of severe winter weather. europe overall had a warmer than average winter. the same storm that hit greece swept across the middle east. this is aley on mount lebanon, uphill from beirut.
and also crucially 91% said they took action, which is really high, with a majority of those saying they did things like securing items around their properties in advance of the storm. so, based on that, we do think the warnings were successful. big storms will always cause disruption, tragically also loss of life, but we are sure that the warnings played a part in ensuring things weren t any worse that week. also, i think it shows how far we ve come in terms of how we prepare for severe weather in the uk, especially since the great storm of 1987. and, when it comes to stormy weather, three named storms in a week, is the uk getting stormier? is climate change making storms stronger when they hit the uk? 0ur long term climate projections do give us some hints. it tells us uk winters are very likely to get milder and wetter, again in the long term. this milder and wetter weather tends to come from the atlantic