Extreme rainfall is now considered to be a worldwide phenomenon which means the risks are even greater as decades-old infrastructure wasn’t built to withstand such conditions. This is also why the work of organisations such as World Weather Attribution (WWA) is becoming even more important. Formed by researchers from institutions such as Imperial College London, The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, WWA works with climate scientists and other experts worldwide to help provide critical knowledge and insights on weather, databases, modelling and impacts.
Recently, researchers from Greece, the US, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK collaborated to assess if human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of heavy flooding that led to widespread impacts across the Mediterranean region.
From 3-10 September 2023 torrential rain fell across Spain, followed by very heavy rain and floods caused by the low-pressure weather system Daniel in Greece and Bulgaria, and then the devastating extreme rainfall that led to floods in Libya. All three individual rainfall events caused severe flooding, submerging settlements, leaving thousands homeless and killing at least 34 people in Bulgaria, Spain, Turkey, and Greece. While the flood-induced Libyan dam failures led to more than 4000 casualties, hundreds of fatalities with thousands of people unaccounted for.
According to WWA, the severe flooding across the region was caused by very heavy rainfall that fell, in the case of Spain in less than 24 hours, whereas it lasted 24 hours in Libya and up to four days over Greece and Turkey. In summary, the researchers state that the return time for the event in Spain is a 1-in-10 to 1-in-40-year event; for central Greece a 1-in-80 to 1-in-250-year event; for the large Greece-Bulgaria-Turkey region a 1-in-5 to 1-in-10-year event; and over Libya a 1-in-300 to 1-in-600-year event – the magnitude of which is far outside that of any previously recorded events.
WWA admits that although there are mathematical uncertainties in their research, they can still be confident that climate change did make the events more likely. For example, it is considered that an increase in rainfall intensity of around 10% would be expected given current warming levels (some reports suggest that the Mediterranean is a climate hotspot and warming 20% faster than the global average), while studies focussing on extreme rainfall with future warming also show an increase in heavy rainfall, rendering it probable that the observed increase in heavy rainfall is indeed a trend due to climate change.
As the researchers stress, this disaster “also points to the challenge of needing to design and maintain infrastructure for not just the climate of the present or the past, but also the future”. For example, last year Greece experienced a summer of extreme heatwaves and fires, including the largest fire ever recorded in the EU, followed by Storm Daniel which devastated the centre of the country. In addition, deforestation and relatively high rates of urbanisation have changed the landscape over time, increasing the number of people and assets exposed to flooding, and reducing stormwater drainage. In Libya, the volume of water and overnight timing of the dam failures meant that anyone in the path of the water was at increased risk, not just those who are typically highly vulnerable. This means, WWA says, taking into account the long-term decline in average rainfall, and at the same time, the increase in extreme rainfall like this heavy rainfall event; a challenging prospect, especially for Libya which is a country plagued by crises.
Underprepared
The UK is another country which continues to experience extreme weather events. In February 2022, the country experienced three named storms in one week for the first time (Dudley, Eunice and Franklin) and more than 370 properties were affected, mainly by river flooding. In July 2021, parts of London received a month’s rain within a couple of hours which led to over 1500 properties suffering from surface water flooding as a result. And more recently, heavy, persistent and widespread rain affected much of England when Storms Babet and Ciaran struck in October and November 2023. The Met Office reported that 18-20 October was the third wettest independent three-day period for England and Wales dating back to 1891. And by the end of October, Storm Babet alone had caused 2200 homes to be flooded.
Despite the increasing risk of flooding, the UK government has been accused of being underprepared for such extreme weather events, according to a new report by the National Audit Office (NAO).
Called Government Resilience: Extreme Weather, the independent public spending watchdog’s report assesses four extreme weather risks: droughts, surface water flooding, storms, and high temperatures (including heatwaves), to determine how well-prepared the country is for the projected increasing frequency and intensity of such events. And currently, the Cabinet Office does not have clearly defined targets or an effective strategy in place to make the UK resilient to extreme weather.
The NAO recommends that departments with responsibility for managing risks should set out clearly defined targets for ‘what good looks like’, so that stakeholders across the public and private sectors are working toward a clear common goal. While the absence of an effective strategy and targets makes it difficult for government to make informed decisions on investment, and the NAO found limited evidence of risk assessments feeding into how funding was allocated.
It was also recommended that the government accelerate plans to develop a coordinated approach to investment in resilience. Specifically, it should develop its approach by 2025 and implement it by 2028, instead of the current 2030 target. However, as the government does not track or evaluate its spending on extreme weather, it cannot currently demonstrate whether value for money is being achieved.
Overall the NAO finds that the government has more to do as, for example, although 3.4million properties are at risk of surface water flooding, surveys show that awareness among the public of the impacts of these events remains low. While the NAO also recommends the Cabinet Office should strengthen the leadership, accountability, and assurance arrangements of extreme weather risks across government, including considering the merits of a Chief Risk Adviser.
“The UK’s experience during the pandemic demonstrated the vital importance of building resilience, and that lesson also applies to extreme weather events,” says Gareth Davies, head of the NAO. “Government needs to place sufficient emphasis on prevention and preparedness – clearly articulating the level of risk it will tolerate – and making informed decisions about prioritisation to ensure efficient and effective investment for the long-term.”
Although the National Infrastructure Commission admits that central government has in place a range of existing protocols for managing the impacts of extreme weather events, such as the drought the UK experienced in 2022 and the flooding and disruption caused by Storm Arwen in 2021 and Storm Ciaràn in 2023, more action is needed to improve coordination of decision making and ensure funding and investment is targeted effectively to limit the impact of such weather events.
In response to the NAO’s findings, Professor Jim Hall of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) said: “Extreme weather events present an acute threat and this report rightly highlights the need for urgent action to ensure our resilience to their impacts. The NAO’s call for clear standards for how national infrastructure should perform echoes a recommendation in our recent National Infrastructure Assessment: if everyone is clear about what effective resilience looks like, targeting funding, securing private sector investment and joined-up responses across multiple responsible organisations become that much easier to achieve.”
The commission’s Second National Infrastructure Assessment in October 2023 made ten recommendations to the government on improving the resilience of the UK’s water, energy, transport and digital infrastructure systems. This included a call for the government to set out by 2025 outcome-based resilience standards for the sectors and take action to ensure regulators took account of these standards in their settlements with infrastructure operators to ensure investment is appropriately targeted towards resilience improvements. The assessment also included specific recommendations on improving access to climate data for infrastructure operators, plus upgrading engineering standards to better reflect future climate impacts.
Concerning cuts
With the above in mind, the bleak news that the Environment Agency (EA) expects to deliver fewer flood protection measures has been described as concerning. In another report called Resilience to Flooding, NAO says that the EA plans to slash the number of additional properties that will be better protected from flooding by 40% and is in stark contrast to when the government launched a flood safety programme back in 2020, saying it wanted to ‘push back the flood waters’ with ‘record investment’.
In addition to reducing these numbers from 336,000 to 200,000 by 2027, the EA is also removing 500 of the 2000 new flood defence projects that were originally included in the programme. This is despite the government doubling its capital funding in England during 2021-7 to £5.2 billion to combat the danger of flooding.
In the first two years of the government’s six-year flood and coastal erosion management programme, EA has improved protection from floods for 59,000 properties in England against a commitment when the programme was announced of better protecting 336,000 by 2027.
Upon assessment, the EA said that maintaining 98% of its high-consequence assets at their required condition at a cost of £235 million would provide the best value for money. However, a shortfall of £34 million in its annual resource funding for 2022-23 meant that EA would only be able to maintain 94%-95% of its assets at the required condition – resulting in 203,000 properties at increased risk of flooding. Although this is not a directly comparable figure, it exceeds the 200,000 properties that are forecast to be better protected through the capital programme.
The NAO report also warns that the EA is failing to meet its maintenance targets but neither the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) or the EA assessed whether using part of the capital underspend to meet the shortfall in its maintenance budget in 2022-23, would provide better value for money than deferring it to later in the capital programme.
The NAO recommends that Defra, the EA, and HM Treasury work together to ensure that decisions on the current capital programme are not influenced by short-term funding periods and targets and are focused on maximising value for money. They also need to ensure that decisions can be taken quickly to switch money from the capital programme (which funds new projects) into the maintenance budget where this provides value for money.
The report concludes that, although the government’s vision for flood resilience stretches to the year 2100 and EA has several strategic objectives for 2050, it has not set a target for the level of flood resilience it expects to achieve, nor has it mapped out any concrete plans beyond 2026 to bridge the gap between its shorter-term actions and long-term objectives. Thus making it difficult for the government to make rational and informed decisions about its priorities, measure its progress or plan effective investments for the long term.
“Government recognises the growing dangers from flooding and has committed to doubling its capital funding in England in the six years to 2027, as well as doing more to understand flood risk. However, the capital funding is forecast to better protect only 60% of properties that were promised when the programme was launched in 2020, while inflation and other programme risks mean the Environment Agency could deliver even fewer than that,” Head of the NAO Gareth Davies says.
Davies also warned that the EA will have to manage a record level of capital investment in flood defences for the remaining four years of the programme. However, he cautions that in doing so, it must resist pressure to accelerate projects or initiate new ones too quickly if this is likely to lead to cost overruns and delays, putting value for money at risk.
Responding to the report, NIC Commissioner Hall said: “The current focus on short-term funding settlements will also do little to bolster efforts to properly maintain flood defences over the longer term and ensure they remain fit for purpose in the face of an evolving climate threat. The need for the Environment Agency to have greater certainty over its long-term funding is clear.”
Key role
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) have released their first joint report to strengthen understanding of renewable energy resources and their intricate relationship with climate variability and change. Launched at COP28 in December 2023, the report called 2022 Year in Review: Climate-driven Global Renewable Energy Potential Resources and Energy Demand, highlights the key role of weather and climate information in meeting the untapped potential and challenges in the transition to renewable energy.
IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera said: “Renewables are critical to achieving a successful energy transition and are a powerful catalyst for mitigating climate change. To stay on the 1.5°C climate pathway, global renewable capacity must triple by 2030. It is also essential that policy makers proactively future-proof energy infrastructure and assets, to account for the impacts of climate change and resulting growing demand.”
The report highlights the importance of understanding how changes in weather patterns could impact the potential capacity of wind, solar and hydropower. The analysis also shows how climate change will impact energy supply and demand, particularly in the context of heating and cooling.
The assessment is seen as being an initial step towards a more rigorous evaluation of climate’s role in renewable energy supply and demand and can be used both as a retrospective analysis and to aid future decision-making.
Ultimately, the report says, policymakers, energy planners and resource managers, as well as grid operators, will need comprehensive data and analysis to fully understand the magnitude and patterns of observed variations in resources and demand. It also says that mainstreaming climate into operation, management and planning of energy resources should be a priority. This could lead to the establishment of early warning systems to help better manage energy load, resources, and maintenance. Moreover, this can inform energy infrastructure modernisation and expansion and trigger the necessary innovation across technologies, markets, and policies. While, comprehensive and systematic energy data collection and sharing are essential to improving knowledge and understanding of climate variability and change in energy supply and demand.
IRENA and the WMO have worked closely together to outline for policymakers, energy planners, resource managers and grid operators alike, the intricate connections of energy indicators at the global and regional levels. The report is the first in a regular annual series as the two organisations strengthen their collaboration in support of climate action.
This article first appeared in International Water Power magazine.
