Safeguarding Our City

17 September 2023

 

Somewhat surprising to me that wildfires around the globe are the biggest significant signal that the planet could be about to cook; I was expecting arctic sea ice to melt and a surge in sea level rise whereby humans desperately construct sea defences so as to give low land settlements a few extra decades of security. The wildfires on the Pacific Island of Maui have proved to be an immediate destructive force where even the rich have failed to escape the carnage.

As for the UK, folks might think the chances of a drought combined with high winds and stupid beings (only a tiny percent of fires ignited by natural occurrence) with their cigarette lighters and BBQs causing thousands of acres of land to burn is not going to happen on our own doorstep. 

North Americans couldn’t see the wild fires coming as they have, and this month the United States Department of Agriculture USDA has produced a document focussing on mitigating climate loss and protecting the carbon from being released into the atmosphere by reducing carbon loss when catastrophe happens.

So the document explains that most carbon is released due to fire, when dead grass, pine needles and other organic material decomposing on the forest floor are ignited. However, as we saw in the 2022 fires around Test Lakes in Hampshire, some of the trees cooked through enough and then did not recover in 2023. These trees will decompose and cause another source of carbon release.

Meanwhile the right wing GNB news station presenters laugh out loud while interviewing a representative from ‘JUST STOP OIL’ at the point he explains that humans cannot handle heat and eventually our bodily organs overheat and that person’s life is put at extreme risk.

Their experience under studio lights should educate them that heat can become uncomfortable, but the heat we could experience in the UK needs to be taken more seriously.

Damage limitation

Let’s assume that the climate around Southampton warms by 1°C by 2040 which is not a great amount of margin of increase for a decade and a half, but this will be a big shift in projection perhaps for the year 2100. The momentum for that increase is most probably already in place and today’s geopolitics is not likely to redraw this projection.

Southampton should start building protections today for the temperature forecasts of tomorrow. The possibility of longer periods without water in Hampshire and drier conditions will put the surrounding countryside at risk of more wildfires and maybe extreme flooding during rainy seasons.

Long term projections for precipitation aren’t proposing increased annual rainfall, but the extreme rainfall from storm Danielle causing dams to burst and pouring water into the local wadi, which is completely dry during periods of dryness, was not a priority to the authorities in the northern port of Libya, Derna.They got caught out by the excessive sea temperature rises causing increased precipitation. Yes, they could have made an effort and prepared for the event but their understanding and ignorance of climate change perhaps meant they took a cavalier approach to the situation.

Without a global insurance policy that properly reduces global emissions Southampton must ensure we can provide security for our residents into the long-term future. Farmers are already cultivating crops for a warmer climate, whether it be wetter or drier and we should think about the outcome of fires fuelled by strong winds taking hold within and around our city so we put proper precautions into place.

 

Notes

 

https://www.climatechangepost.com/united-kingdom/climate-change/#

 

 

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