flooding, weather event, or global warming?

hiwayman

At the risk of starting another global warming slagging match and point scoring, I'd like to make this point. Over the last couple of years cold weather events have increased compered to the previous years when global warming seemed to be (amongst other things) causing sky resorts to run out of snow.
Last year Ireland,Britain, western Europe and north America experienced colder and in some places, much snower then had been seen in many years. But these were just weather events!!
Now we get heavy rain which causes wide spread flooding and all over the media, this is the effect of Global warming!!

Heroditas

Poor infrastructure, shoddy building work and not enough drainage.

quentingargan

We put a bridge over a river here for a walk as part of the Sheeps Head Way. The place we put it would be inundated once every year or so, but this year it happened twice in July, once in August, again in September, and I haven't been down there yet, but would be surprised if it is still there.

In July on one occasion the water came over the handrail.

Its a bit much to assume that we should have drainage in place already to cope with these sort of conditions when many taxpayers still don't seem to believe in climate change...

marizpan

Climate change/global warming doesnt mean we should all have hotter weather.He changes all the ocean currents etc where hot and cold fronts meet. It would cause nothern europe to get colder and wetter, while sounthern europe to get hot, dry and desert like. Ireland should be very cold but because of these currents it keeps its maritime climate.

HollyEvans

Research the term "floodplain".

When you understand the concept, come back and tell me if you would build houses on a flood plain.

Shiny

^

I think the significance of the flooding other than the obvious 'yearly'
locations in Cork, Clonmel and Carlow is that in the past few days
places have been flooded that have never been flooded before in
living memory.

Surely its a little more than a coincidence ?

quentingargan

I think Cork celebrated its 800th anniversary recently. Its a bit late to move it now.

Yes, building on flood plains is part of the problem, but the exceptional nature of the rainfall is exactly what was predicted would happen with climate change in Ireland. You can't pin a particular weather event to climate change, but the trends should be clear, and should be a wake-up call.

Pembily

Lack of drainage and building on ALL FLOOD PLAINS means the water has no where to rest at all!!!!!

We always get bad weather, it's Ireland, the flooding is worse cos there are more houses, etc and the infastructure has not been updated to keep up with all the houses...

It is not "2012" yet but global warming is a problem but not the cause of the flooding problem!!!!

Shiny

What would happen if this level of rain fell in 6 weeks time as snow?

hiwayman

Heroditas wrote: »

Poor infrastructure, shoddy building work and not enough drainage.

It looks to me mo like too much drainage

dny123456

Shiny wrote: »

What would happen if this level of rain fell in 6 weeks time as snow?

Oh that would be cool!

Heroditas

Heroditas wrote: »

Poor infrastructure, shoddy building work and not enough drainage.

Since 1998, close to 700,000 new houses/apartments were completed in Ireland

http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/StatisticsandRegularPublications/HousingStatistics/FileDownLoad,20957,en.pdf

Thats a hell of alot of concrete

Macha

You can also look at EPA figures for a change in surface type over the last number of years. This graph shows % changes from 1990-2000, obviously 2000-2009 would be very interesting:

taconnol

taconnol wrote: »

You can also look at EPA figures for a change in surface type over the last number of years. This graph shows % changes from 1990-2000, obviously 2000-2009 would be very interesting:

wow, amazing stuff!
I must add to my comment, for balance, that despite the land use changes there is no dispute that the rainfall wasnt record breaking e.g North Wales.

I would argue that the flooding was caused by a mix of bad planning and an extreme weather event but that heavy rainfall such as experienced recently is not something we cant deal with simply because such rainfall is normal in some parts of the world and the engineering needed to deal with it is tried and tested.

Heroditas

Something else struck me the other day. I was out for a walk near the office and the road is overhung by a bank of deciduous trees. Naturally, because it’s autumn, the leaves had fallen off and were lying on the footpath. However, it rained for a couple of days and all the leaves got churned up into a mushy sticky substance.
All this ended up on the side of the road.
However, a couple of days later, most of it was swept up and sitting in nice neat piles right beside the storm drains.
No surprises for guessing what happens if you have heavy rainfall – the leaves get swept into the gutters and block them up.
And they wonder why streets are getting flooded? FFS! Piling wet soggy leaves right beside the drains is hardly going to help!

Irelands top climatologist, Professor John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth will be on the front line to discuss the floods tonight. Irelands Climate Analysis and Research Units are based at NUI Maynooth.


http://icarus.nuim.ie/people/sweeney-john

John_F

was the ice age due to man? was the melting of these ices caused by man? It may be natural you know,

brightspark

Another probable cause of flooding is that we have changed the natural course/width of rivers, the water has to go somewhere!

(see these pics of Blackrock Castle in Cork, the first one taken about 100yrs ago)

http://www.photographyireland.net/viewtopic.php?t=34424


I don't have the "now" pic of the old abbey in Holycross, Thurles but the river is now further away than shown in this old pic too.

http://digital.nli.ie/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/glassplates&CISOPTR=10420&CISOBOX=1&REC=7

I wonder how many other rivers in the country have been constricted like this.

RedPlanet

brightspark wrote: »

Another probable cause of flooding is that we have changed the natural course/width of rivers, the water has to go somewhere!

It sure is, but that is not the cause of these floodings because we've also experienced record falls of rain (3 years in a row).

robtri

IMHO.... the flooding is caused by our changing climate nothing more nothing less,
the destruction of houses is because of poor planning in a lot of cases...

whether that is cuased by man or whether its just natural climate change.. is another question

Macha

John_F wrote: »

was the ice age due to man? was the melting of these ices caused by man? It may be natural you know,

John_F, please note that there are ample threads discussing the validity of anthropogenic climate change. There is no need to drag this thread down that road as well.

AngryHippie

Its not just about how much rain is falling, its also about how quickly it falls, If the normal amount of rain for a 24 hour period falls in 4 hours, it is not going to have time to flow away fast enough, the rainfall charts that are used in the British Standards and Eurocode are being exceeded over short periods of time, and the drainage schemes designed to carry that water away are not able to handle the level of water in 4 hours, so you end up with a flood for 20 hours until it gets a chance to drain away. Now scale that up from one pipe, to the drainage scheme for a town the size of clonmel, or ballinasloe or carrick-on-shannon and throw in a load of hastily planned and development on land that was always prone to occasional flooding and you end up with flooded house, blocked roads, overflowing sewage pipes, stranded livestock, ruined feedstock and all of the other horrible effects that we see at the moment. As it stands, the finger of blame points first to the engineers, then to the planners, then to the people who drew up the rainfall charts, then back to all of us that have been driving our obese kids to school a few km away in our SUV's and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate sufficient to cause a warming in the tropics that may affect our ocean currents, climate and ultimately weather patterns. The bad news is , it probably will get worse before it gets better, and there is fcuk all anyone can do about it now. :eek:

hiwayman

Shiny wrote: »

^

I think the significance of the flooding other than the obvious 'yearly'
locations in Cork, Clonmel and Carlow is that in the past few days
places have been flooded that have never been flooded before in
living memory.

Surely its a little more than a coincidence ?

Or perhaps all the development (building and the filling in draining of swampy ground at higher levels) has something to do with it!