GLOBAL warming has led to more frequent and intense extreme rainfall over the past 40 years, an analysis of weather records revealed.
Scientists at the University of Newcastle who studied rainfall records collected between 1961 and 2000 discovered that extreme events likely to cause flooding have become twice as large and four times as common in parts of Britain. Scotland and the North of England were the worst affected.
The findings suggest that flooding will become a greater threat in the coming decades, particularly for the five million Britons living near rivers.
“Our research shows that there were significant changes in the timing and occurrence of extreme rainfall events,” said Dr Hayley Fowler, who led the research. “The size of extreme rainfall events has increased two-fold over parts of the UK since the 1960s, and intensities previously experienced every 25 years now occur at six-year intervals. The majority of events now occur in autumn months, with implications for flood risk management.”
In the study, to be presented at the Festival of Science, the team looked at four rainfall events, when rain falls for one, two, five or ten consecutive days. Extreme events with five or ten days of rainfall were twice as common in the North of England, and four times more common in Scotland, during the 1990s compared with the previous 30 years.
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In the South East of England, extreme rainfall became less common, but there was more small extreme rainfall.