Why is flooding on the increase in britain

About 12 per cent of the land in England is adjacent to a river or stream and these low-lying areas are more vulnerable to floods. In , the government set a target to build , new homes a year by the mids, but approximately one in ten of all new homes are constructed in flood zones as there is limited space available outside of these zones. For instance, the east Lincolnshire area has experienced at least eight major flooding incidents in the past 20 years, according to the Environment Agency.

Some regions are looking beyond national government for protection against extreme weather. She said there was a lack even of basic data, caused by a refusal to invest in more precise research.

These urgently need updating. Funding for flood defences needs to be devolved to local areas and sit within a new national framework for addressing the climate emergency. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said his powers were limited on flood defences, but he was dealing urgently with Thames Water on the issue. This includes continuing to urge Thames Water to address localised issues with infrastructure that may exacerbate the impact of flooding. The latest State of the UK Climate report indicates the UK has become wetter over the last few decades, although with significant annual variation.

The change in rainfall depends on location — for example, Scotland has experienced the greatest increase in rainfall, while most southern and eastern areas of England have experienced the least change.

From the start of the observational record in , six of the ten wettest years across the UK have occurred since Both these trends point to an increase in frequency and intensity of rainfall across the UK. However, the variation in rainfall from year to year is still large, highlighting the importance of considering long-period natural variations.

Because current trends in extreme rainfall are within past natural variation, it can be difficult to isolate effects on our longer-term rainfall due to human influence by looking only at the observational record.

A study using high-resolution climate models predicts that the influence of human-caused climate change will likely not be seen clearly in short-duration hourly and shorter timescale extreme rainfall trends in the UK until at least the s for winter and s for summer.

In the meantime, it is possible to determine how much human-influenced climate change has affected significant events through climate attribution studies. While it is also useful to study the impacts of increased rainfall, tracking flooding events caused by extreme rainfall is much trickier.

Flooding can be affected by a combination of many factors including but not limited to river flow rates, local soil type and the presence of flood defences. Rainfall patterns in the UK vary by region and season and will continue to do so in the future.

Overall, the UK is expected to experience wetter winters and drier summers. However, rain that does fall in summer will likely be more intense than what we currently experience. This will impact on the frequency and severity of surface water flooding, particularly in urban areas. The UK Met Office has already observed an increase in intense downpours. Scientists said earlier in July that the catastrophic floods that struck Europe recently could become much more frequent because of global heating.

The UK government has been repeatedly told in recent years that its preparations to protect people from increased extreme weather were failing. We are standing by communities and will bolster defences against flooding across England with many thousands more properties better protected by