Nature at work (From Malvern Gazette)

Nature at work

4:23pm Friday 10th August 2007 in Letters

MR Victory (Your Letters, July 27) is right when he blames building on flood plains, so reducing their absorptive capacity, and ill-considered upstream flood protection schemes ("one man's flood defence scheme is another man's flood") for the unusually severe problems at Worcester, Upton and Gloucester.

But whatever may be the role of man-made carbon dioxide in climate change, he is wrong to blame this and us for the recent disaster. Climatologists agree that greenhouse gas-models predict hotter, drier summers with progressive increases in sea-level over decades. But this English summer is colder and wetter.

As Prof Philip Stott writes in last Friday's Daily Telegraph: "Since the 1920's, we have known that this month's particular weather pattern is associated with special conditions in the Pacific, called La Niña, in which ocean waters are colder than normal. This produces a flex in our Northern Hemisphere jet stream which drags deep depressions across the British Isles".

So I am afraid this is a natural phenomenon coming inconveniently in the middle of what should be our summer.

Prof Derek Smith, Priory Road, Malvern.