Wednesday, May 19, 2021
The climate crisis getting too close to home
For many people the climate crisis is a remote phenomenon that has little bearing on their lives. Granted the weather is a bit more extreme and unpredictable, but for those of us living in the UK we have not yet seen the crop failures, famines and destructive weather patterns that have emerged elsewhere in the world as a result of global warming. That though, may change some time soon.
The Guardian reports that new data from the British Geological Survey (BGS) suggests millions of homes are at increased risk of subsidence due to hotter and drier summers being driven by global heating causing the ground under houses to shrink and crack.
They say the key areas affected are London, Essex, Kent, and a swathe of land from Oxford up to the Wash. This is because the clay formations underlying these areas are most vulnerable to losing moisture:
In a medium scenario for future emissions, the area of Great Britain that is highly or extremely likely to see increased risk of clay-related subsidence increases by a third from 2020 to 2030 and triples by 2050.
The projections are similar in a separate high emissions scenario, but this dataset allows the number of homes at risk of subsidence to be calculated. About a million homes were at risk in 1990 and this rises to 2.4m in 2030 and 4m in 2070. London is the most affected, with nearly half of the capital’s homes at increased risk in 2030 and 57% in 2070, according to BGS.
“It is a very clear message that repeats in both projections,” said Anna Harrison, at BGS. “The south-east gets a double whammy, in that they’ve got susceptible geology and much drier, warmer summers are projected there.”
The subsidence risk projections could be used as a planning tool, she said, to highlight areas where the foundations of new houses may need to be deeper to avoid future problems. Subsidence is estimated to have cost £3bn in the last decade.
“Dry weather and high temperatures are going to be a major factor in the emergence of future shrink-swell subsidence,” said Lee Jones, a geological engineer at BGS. “The longer drought you get, and the higher the temperature is, the more moisture that’s going to be driven off.”
“In the south-east, many of the clay formations are too young to have been changed into stronger mud rocks, leaving them vulnerable to absorb and lose moisture,” he said.
The big question is whether the UK government and local authorities are geared up to deal with this issue. In my view that is unlikely.
The Guardian reports that new data from the British Geological Survey (BGS) suggests millions of homes are at increased risk of subsidence due to hotter and drier summers being driven by global heating causing the ground under houses to shrink and crack.
They say the key areas affected are London, Essex, Kent, and a swathe of land from Oxford up to the Wash. This is because the clay formations underlying these areas are most vulnerable to losing moisture:
In a medium scenario for future emissions, the area of Great Britain that is highly or extremely likely to see increased risk of clay-related subsidence increases by a third from 2020 to 2030 and triples by 2050.
The projections are similar in a separate high emissions scenario, but this dataset allows the number of homes at risk of subsidence to be calculated. About a million homes were at risk in 1990 and this rises to 2.4m in 2030 and 4m in 2070. London is the most affected, with nearly half of the capital’s homes at increased risk in 2030 and 57% in 2070, according to BGS.
“It is a very clear message that repeats in both projections,” said Anna Harrison, at BGS. “The south-east gets a double whammy, in that they’ve got susceptible geology and much drier, warmer summers are projected there.”
The subsidence risk projections could be used as a planning tool, she said, to highlight areas where the foundations of new houses may need to be deeper to avoid future problems. Subsidence is estimated to have cost £3bn in the last decade.
“Dry weather and high temperatures are going to be a major factor in the emergence of future shrink-swell subsidence,” said Lee Jones, a geological engineer at BGS. “The longer drought you get, and the higher the temperature is, the more moisture that’s going to be driven off.”
“In the south-east, many of the clay formations are too young to have been changed into stronger mud rocks, leaving them vulnerable to absorb and lose moisture,” he said.
The big question is whether the UK government and local authorities are geared up to deal with this issue. In my view that is unlikely.
The Guardian says that in 2019, the UK’s official advisers, the Climate Change Committee, said it was shocked at the lack of proper plans for protecting people from heatwaves, flash flooding and other impacts of the climate crisis. I suspect nothing much has changed since then.
